


you and her loathing this cruel world

by thememoriesfire



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-10
Updated: 2011-07-10
Packaged: 2017-10-21 05:39:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 25,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/221542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thememoriesfire/pseuds/thememoriesfire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Of all the girls he had to have sex with (which really, were none), of course it was someone with a painting of Jesus above her bed, so he knows that his only hope in hell that this will go away is in a negative test result."</p><p>Season 1 AU; Kurt is pretty sure he's gay, but would like to make sure.  Quinn Fabray has similar questions running through her mind.  They put their theories to the test, with very much unintended consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s not easy feeling different in Lima.

There’s more than one way of coping with it, and while Kurt ideally just goes home as quickly as he can after school and drowns himself in fashion blogs full of haute couture on the internet, dreaming away about a time when he’ll live in New York City and be part of a movement rather than the only indication of it, he accepts that it’s not that simple for everyone.  (Simple is a relative concept, of course, but even so.)

The day he actually thinks  _to hell with it_  and opts to just clean the Slushie off his sweater in the girl’s bathroom (because it’s closer, and because he’s just so sick and tired of every other boy in school staring at him with mistrust when he uses the guy’s bathroom), he figures out that maybe he doesn’t have it so bad.

His father loves him, and even though Kurt’s nowhere near ready to have  _that_  conversation with him, some part of him already knows that after an initial period of awkwardness, his family life won’t suffer from it.

Call him crazy, but he’s fairly sure that that’s not how things would play out for Quinn Fabray if  _her_  parents ever figure out that she likes feeling Rachel Berry up in the bathroom after school.

*

Rachel makes an unusually silent exit after just one look from Quinn, who then turns on him with a look that turns his blood to ice.

“I could have you killed,” she says, so calmly that he actually  _believes_  it for a second, before remembering that they’re in  _high school_ , and she doesn’t actually have mob connections because—what on Earth would the mafia even be doing in Lima?

“I’m not sure why you would,” he says, not liking that his voice comes out in a girlier squeak than he does, but good  _God_  she has terrifying down in ways that normal girls her age don’t.  It makes sense, in a strange way, why she is the way she is now; but he’s hardly going to be hugging it out with her and congratulating her on her probable, eventual personal growth.

Not when he’s not even ready to take a step to say that—

“I’m  _not gay_ ,” she says, staring him down.  “It was a mistake.  RuPaul forced herself on me, and—”

“It’s okay,” he offers, and then when she stares at him some more, adds, “I’m not gay either.  Despite what people think.”

It’s not entirely a lie, because he  _isn’t_ sure.

Not entirely anyway.  The only thing he knows is that despite his lower-than-average intellect, Finn Hudson’s smile is approximately the only reason to even attend PE.  (Kurt knows he’s unlikely to pass the class unless rhythmic gymnastics randomly gets added to the curriculum, and despite repeat requests, Coach Tanaka does not seem amenable.)  But still.  Is that enough to make him…  _that_  different?

He just doesn’t know enough.  He never has; it’s just everyone else who seems to have known  _for_ him, but being called a fag for the past four years has only convinced him that Ohio is the armpit of hell and he can’t wait to get out—not that he’s exclusively attracted to  _guys_  or anything like that.

Quinn’s jaw works hard for a few seconds, and then her face crumples completely.  “God.  God, you could’ve been Santana.  Or Brittany, or—”

“But I’m not,” Kurt says, feeling slightly more at ease.

They’re unlikely to start talking about their hair (and it’s a shame, because hers positively glows and he’d love to know her secrets) and then exchange numbers, but there’s an odd familiarity between them anyway, just for a moment.

He watches silently as she pulls herself together again and then just picks up her bag and says, “This never happened.”

“I’m unlikely to tell anyone that I randomly encountered  _anything_  in the girl’s bathroom, Quinn,” he says, dryly, and for one second he thinks she might smile.

Then, she just takes a deep breath and storms past him—probably straight outside, to where Finn Hudson is waiting to hold her hand in his.

They’re the most glorious couple in the entire school, and the only thing that keeps Kurt from crying when Karofsky slams him into a locker the next day is the knowledge that the most glorious couple in the entire school is nothing but a lie for the sake of appearances.

He may not have much going for him, but at least he’s not in Quinn Fabray’s shoes.

*

The urge to tell Mercedes  _something_  is overwhelming, but he doesn’t, simply because he’s seeing Quinn in a way that he doesn’t think anyone ever has before.  The tension behind her teacher’s-pet smiles is tangible to him, now, and the way in which she tells Rachel Berry to get out of her way with an abrupt, “Move it, Manhands”—

Despite the appalled look in Rachel’s face, Kurt’s positive that all of it is hurting Quinn more than it could ever hurt Rachel.

He lingers in the background and watches, and tries not to wonder if Finn is perhaps  _part_  of this arrangement in a way that would make him suddenly available, because he’s not much for self-delusion, and besides, what would they even do together, if it was an option?

His ludicrous… sort of crush fades, with every passing day of watching Quinn barely keep a hold on the things she’s trying to balance, until finally, it all threatens to come bursting open in the middle of a Glee club meeting.

Rachel smiles at Finn in such an obvious way that even Tina and Artie start muttering, and Finn sort of looks back, confused but not disinterested, and the panic on Quinn’s face is setting off alarm bells in Kurt’s head.

“Mr. Schue, if I may,” he says, abruptly, cutting off what is undoubtedly another pseudo-educational and vaguely self-interested rant on how music from the 1970s speaks to the soul.

“Kurt?” Mr. Schue says, tiredly.

“I think that before we focus on our respective singing abilities, we should—probably engage in a bonding exercise.  Get to know people who are now team-mates that we don’t historically associate with, and perhaps sing a duet with them.”

It’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever said, and he can just about feel the _girl, you trippin?_  vibes flowing off Mercedes to his left, but he doesn’t look at her; just crosses his legs and sits back.

Everyone is silent, until Rachel turns to half-way look at him and then says, smartly, “Transparent as your attempt to try to get to sing a duet with Finn are, there are actually some merits—”

“Actually,” Kurt says, giving her a small smile that he hopes she chokes on, “I was going to suggest that Quinn and I sing together.  We’re matched in build, which will be excellent for any dancing required, and our voices would blend well in the higher registers.”

Rachel looks like a fish gasping for air for a moment, before finally just making a ‘hmmph’ noise and saying, “I would be amenable to working on a duet with Puck, in that case.”

“I’ll take Brittany,” Tina says, before anyone else can object.  “We could do a bad-ass tap routine together.”

“Um—Santana?” Artie asks, sounding incredibly uncomfortable; more so when Santana turns to raise her eyebrows at him.  “I’m a pretty good singer, so—”

“I’m not sitting in your lap, Wheels,” Santana says, shortly, but then turns back to the front; it feels like an acceptance even if it isn’t.

“I guess I’m with Finn,” Mercedes finally says, with a sigh.

Mike and Matt look at each other for a moment and then Mike says, “We can pretend we don’t know each other.  I mean, who are you again?”

Everyone chuckles at the lame joke, but Kurt just glances between Quinn and Mr. Schue.  Neither of them are meeting his eyes.

Mr. Schue stares at the white board for a few seconds and then nods. “Okay then.  I think we can work this into the theme I had planned for this week, which is  _acceptance_.”

Kurt almost rolls his eyes—really?—but then just glances over to where Quinn is still studiously staring everywhere but at another person.

He reminds himself she’s not actually mobbed up, and at worst he’s going to have to spend some quality time with someone exactly as bitchy as himself.  It’ll be educational, and, well.  If there  _is_  such a thing as karma, perhaps some of it will come his way.

*

Quinn hauls ass out of the classroom before he can even so much as set up an appointment with her, and so he’s astonished when she’s waiting out in front of the school, arms crossed in front of her, leaning against the hood of her car.

“Get in,” she just says.

It’s funny how so many years of being tossed into a dumpster have made him  _exceptionally_  responsive to simple, short commands like that, and next thing he knows he’s in the passenger seat, clutching his bag to his chest.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at, but—”

“You were about to lose it,” he says, before she can go off on some sort of ranting tangent about how her business is not his and he needs to mind his own.  “It wasn’t obvious to anyone else, but it’s obvious to  _me_  that Rachel and Finn are driving you to the absolute brink of sanity and—”

“Shut up,” Quinn says, but without any real conviction.  She pinches the bridge of her nose and then tips her head back against the headrest, closing her eyes.  “Just—you have no idea what’s going on.”

“I don’t, but if I had to take a guess, Rachel Berry with her two gay parents and general commitment to all causes on this planet isn’t much for being someone’s… one-time mistake,” he says, quietly.

Quinn exhales sharply and then, after a long pause, starts chuckling.  “That’s an understatement.”

He wants to ask if it’s the  _one time_  or just his general feelings on Rachel that she’s agreeing to, but before he can she just shakes her head and says, “This can’t be happening to me.”

“But it  _is_.”

“I’m head cheerleader; I’m captain of the abstinence club… I go to church three days a week and pray every night.  I get good grades, I have a boyfriend who loves me,” she says, stiltedly, before biting on her lip and just stopping there.

He doesn’t want to placate her by saying it’s okay; not when he’s still not entirely sure that it  _is_ , and when it’s blatantly clear to him that whatever issues she herself may be having, the people around both of them are what’s really the issue.

“I’m just surprised you’d kiss anyone who wears those atrocious sweaters.  I held you in higher regard than that,” he finally says.

Quinn bursts out laughing, surprising both of them, before covering her hand with her mouth. Then, she bursts into tears, and Kurt awkwardly slips his bag strap over his head and lowers his bag to the ground, before reaching across the console and offering her a hand.

She grips it tightly, and after about five minutes, stops sobbing.

“I’m not gay,” she says, again.  “I  _can’t_  be.”

It’s the stupidest question to ask, which is probably why it escapes his mouth before he can stop it.  “Are you sure that you are?”

And that’s  _his_  issue, not hers, but she turns to look at him with shiny eyes and such desperation on her face that he can’t even begin to imagine backing out now.  “I mean—are you  _sure?_ Have you tried… being with—Finn?”

Her face clouds over and she shudders, her hand shaking in his.  “He’s—too… too clumsy. Everything about him is just—and—we kiss, obviously, but he doesn’t have any finesse, and—”

The little bubble of his dream about Finn walking down a street with him, twirling him once to a song that only they can hear, before going to a theater together, bursts without remorse.  “So—not Finn then.  But he’s only one very particular type of man, and—”

Quinn visibly steels herself and then squeezes his hand for a moment.  “Yeah.  You’re right.  I shouldn’t assume that just because—I mean, God, I don’t even  _like_  her, I just can’t stop…”

“I would pretend to understand, but when I look at Rachel Berry I start feeling distinct urges to heave, and that’s  _before_  she opens her ignorant Muppet mouth and the real agony starts,” he says, dryly, and Quinn snorts before shaking her head.

“Are you… really not gay?” she asks, in the silence.  “I don’t want to offend you, but—”

This isn’t the place where he thought he’d first talk about this, out loud: holding hands with a sexually confused cheerleader in a red Miata parked in the school parking lot.

“I just don’t know,” he says, finally.  She deserves that much.  “I’ve never even been kissed, and I’ve definitely never been in love.  I’ve just been…”

“Confused,” she says, when he takes too long to find the best word.

It’s not entirely what he means, but it’s close enough.

They’re both silent after that, and he suspects it’s for the same reason; she’s third in their class, and he’s fifth, and there isn’t really anywhere else to go to, mentally, after what they’ve laid out to each other just now.  They’re both  _scared_ , and they’re both  _unsure_.

“I have some wine coolers in my bedroom,” Quinn finally says, in the smallest voice he’s ever heard her use.  “They’re left over from a party at Puck’s, and I don’t even know what I was planning on doing with them, but—”

“If we need to be drunk to… even contemplate this, I think we have our answer,” Kurt says, pulling his hand back.

Quinn hangs on, tightly.  “That’s not—I’m not suggesting we drink because you’re a  _boy_.  I’m suggesting it because I’m not—I don’t really know how to—I mean, if we actually do this, that’s going to be a lot of firsts for me in one day and I just think that—”

“Oh, God,” he says, and he knows he’s paling.  “I hadn’t—you’re going to see me naked.”

“I don’t  _have_  to.  I mean, if things even get that far, we can… turn the light off,” she offers, and then takes a haggard breath.  “I have a lot of stretch marks and maybe it’s just—maybe you’ll be more comfortable if we—”

God, women are so completely alien to him emotionally that all he can do is offer her a faint smile and a sincere compliment.  “For what it’s worth, you are the most attractive girl I’ve ever met.  Your cheekbones are to die for, and your eyelashes—many a model would kill for them, Quinn.  So—lights on or lights off, I really don’t think I could do better.”

She smiles back a watery smile and says, “Maybe if Finn knew how to say things like  _that_ , I’d be a little more interested in… you know.”

He doesn’t, really, but apparently she  _does_ , and when she pulls her hand away and starts the car, he just takes a deep breath and says, “Are we actually doing this?  Because it’s not too late to just—sing a duet together, and pretend we’ve never had this conversation.”

She reverses out of the spot with shark-like precision, and then just gives him one last look.  “I’ve been agonizing over this for the better part of two months.  I can’t sleep, I can barely eat, and I almost dropped Santana off the pyramid two days ago.  I’m not sure that this is a good idea, but I have to do  _something_.”

“Yeah,” he says, and glances out the window.  “I know what you mean.”

*

This is definitely not going to be the last time he’s going to see a girl like this—topless in front of him, looking at him anxiously for some sort of reassurance.

In the future, he’ll be holding a pin cushion and pulling straps of fabric up around them, and even now, he can’t help but assess what she has in the most objective way possible.  Her skin is  _flawless_.  The stretch marks she keeps brushing her hands past are almost invisible to the naked eye, and don’t do anything to detract from her overall physique.  Her breasts are identical and completely normal-looking, as far as he can tell (he’s hardly an expert) and in any event, pleasantly small.

“Am I … do you think I’m fat?” she asks, after an awkward pause, in which he’s still just scanning up and down her body, wondering what she’s going to wear to homecoming.  

“What?” he asks, blinking rapidly.  “No.  Good lord, are you crazy?  You’re at best a size 2, aren’t you?”

She bites her lip and glances down at herself.  “I just—”

“Quinn, honey; one day, when I start making clothes, I am going to call you up and force you to try them on for me.  You’re—everything about you is an artist’s dream,” he says, reaching forward to cup her face for just a second, until she looks back up.  “Honest.  There’s a reason all the other girls at school hate and envy you in equal measure.  You’re perfect.”

“So—you’re—you think you can…” she says, after a second, almost leaning into his hand but not really.  It’s followed with a pointed look at his briefs, which—

“We should probaby—kiss.  Again,” he says, and she frowns for just a second and then says, “We have two more bottles; if you want, we can—”

“No, I’m okay,” he says, because, honestly—the idea of kissing a topless girl is kind of blowing his mind in spite of the lingering feeling he gets that perhaps they’re engaging in something really, really misguided.

He’s going places that Finn Hudson never has, and when Quinn wraps one hand around his neck again, pulling him forward and on top of her—the pleats of her Cheerios skirt brushing up against his thighs—that’s the thought that sticks around the most.  Finn’s been here; Finn’s kissed  _her_.  

He wonders what Finn kisses like, for a second, and she gasps against his mouth when—oh.  

“Sorry,” he says, and she just shakes her head underneath him and says, “Just kiss me again.”

He does, and she’s an excellent kisser.  Not that he has much to compare her to, but he’s heard stories from Mercedes and Tina, and sometimes, apparently, guys just push too hard; throat rape, is what they call it, and there’s none of that here.

“Your lips are so soft,” Quinn breathes after a moment.

“Burt’s Bees,” he responds, brushing some hair out of her face and tucking it behind her ear.  “It’s—”

“Yeah, really good,” she agrees, and closes her eyes and kisses him again.

He almost forgets what he’s doing and who he’s with, at some point, but then her hand slips around his back and fingertips dance around the edge of his briefs, and he almost laughs because—isn’t  _he_  the one supposed to be forward like this?  Isn’t that the whole problem that started abstinence club in the first place—Finn wanting too much too fast, and Quinn needing additional ways of telling him no?

There’s rumors that he can’t keep it under control, which—Kurt’s lying if he doesn’t think that’s a little bit sexy; being  _so_  into something that there’s just no stopping biology, and unwillingly he grinds down a little bit, right between Quinn’s legs.

She makes a small noise and then pulls away from their kiss, still soft and wet, and says, “I—if we’re going to do this, I think we should just do it.”

“Okay,” Kurt whispers back, and rolls off her just enough pull off his underwear.  She pushes her skirt down her legs, and a pair of spank pants join it on the floor a moment later.  It’s almost too dark to see anything, but he can see—well, the obvious  _lack of something_  between her legs anyway, and she bites her lip when he glances back up at her face, before blushing furiously at what  _is_  between his.

“I—I don’t know an awful lot about this,” he admits, with a wince, “but it’s my understanding that this might—”

“I had horse riding lessons when I was younger,” she says, and then grimaces, covering her eyes.  “Sorry.  That’s—what a stupid thing to say.”

“Horse-riding… yeah, okay.  I mean, if you’re sure that that… okay, then,” he says, haltingly, and waits for any further sign that they’re actually going to do this.

“Sorry,” she says, again, and when she lowers her hand, there’s something about the look on her face that makes him actually  _really_  like her, for possibly the first time ever.  He’s felt for her, until now, but it’s almost like he’s getting his first glance at the real Quinn Fabray, who is  _just a girl_ , much like he’s just a boy.

“Can you—I mean.  You should probably… help yourself,” he says, knowing that the tips of his ears are glowing, and she flushes as well and then says, “I don’t really… do that.  I mean.  I’ve… done it, but…”

“Well, when in Rome…,” he says, trying not to laugh, but then  _she_  starts and says, “Yeah.  Wow, Kurt.  I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

He almost  _giggles_ , and she lets out some more shaky laughter.  It just about settles them both again.

There’s just the slightest tug on his arm after that, and he takes a deep breath and settles back on top of her—or between her legs, this time, and then slowly shifts forward on his elbow until there’s—yeah.  That’s  _her_ , there.  And, maybe he’s misunderstood the basic tenets of female biology, but she really should be—wetter than she is.

“Are you—ready enough?” he asks, trying not to frown, because he’s not exactly sure what he could do if she wasn’t; he has some  _ideas_ , but none that he actually wants to engage with.

She blushes even harder, if that’s possible, and then a hand disappears between them and—

“You’re a really good kisser.  Almost as good as…” she then says, red _everywhere_ , before closing her eyes and just nodding.  “I’m—yeah.”

He knows how she feels, and, before this can get any more horrific for either of them, nudges forward—bracing on one hand, because apparently this _isn’t_  as simple as tab A just sliding into slot B, and he needs to help it along a little, but then—he’s there, and she’s really just—

“Oh,” he gasps, and then blinks at her.  “I’m—um.  Oh, my God.”

“Are you okay?” she asks, two hands on his shoulders, looking up at  _him_ with concern.

“I think that’s my line,” he just about manages, before shifting a little.

She winces, and then says, “Just—hang on a second.”

No  _wonder_  Finn loses his cool.  Except—he’s never gotten to do this, and Kurt closes his eyes and wonders what Finn would  _do_  in this situation, if he could—would he just slide inside of her in one go, and then pound away, almost dancing the bed into the wall?  Or would he steady himself and rock in and out of her with—

“Oh,  _God,_ ” he says, and Quinn lets out a small, strangle cry beneath him when he just sinks forward.

She doesn’t do much of anything beyond that, other than bite her lip and stare somewhere past him, and he very carefully pulls back a little—but it’s hard, much harder than he expected, to not just crazily slam into her.  He’s not sure that that’s a comment on his sexuality at all; maybe it’s just biology, but on a very basic level she’s got something that’s  _made_  for something of his, and he can feel sweat on his forehead just from this small moment of giving her time.

“Kiss me again?” she finally asks, small and unsure, and he does, leaning towards her mouth on trembling arms, until she makes a whisper of a noise that sounds like assent, and then he’s moving again, awkwardly but carefully.

After a few moments of it, her hand reappears between them, and occasionally brushes up against him, jolting them both—but he can feel what she’s doing, tentatively and without much purpose, and—

“Okay?” he asks again, their lips popping apart wetly.

“I—yeah,” she says, her eyes still screwed shut, and yeah.  Maybe he shouldn’t look at her.  This feels like a strangely private moment, and it’s probably for the best if he just—lets his head drop to her shoulder, and focuses on how strange and good it all feels.

Finn wouldn’t last a minute.  He lasts about two, which is still not great, he’s fairly sure, but it’s hard to focus on that when he feels  _so_ much, and Quinn swallows hard right next his ear and then  _her_ breathing picks up and—he kisses her again, just because she’s there and her lips are soft and he thinks he  _knows_  what she needs.

He’s not wrong; after just a few brushes of their lips together, she moans a name that definitely isn’t  _his_  right into his mouth and then she spasms underneath him and—

“Don’t cry,” he says, awkwardly, but she does, and he hugs her with as much distance between their lowers halves as possible, in an almost dark room, while wondering if they can maybe  _talk_  about how they were both thinking about other people just now and they really should stop pretending they don’t know what that means.

*

They get dressed again on opposite sides of the bed, and he won’t look at her until she clears her throat and says, “Do you have any ideas about that duet?” in a worn and tired voice.

He tries for a smile, but it’s not quite there, and then just says, “I—think we both need some time.  I can call you tomorrow.”

“You don’t have my number,” she says, without any real malice, and then sighs and gets her phone.  “Though I guess at the point where you’ve taken my virginity—”

“Quinn,” he says, weary but even then not wanting to regret this  _that_  badly, because—now he knows, and he can move forward.  

Which is where things will be different for her, because—

“Just don’t,” she says, quietly, and then holds out her hand for his phone.  He hands it over silently and waits for her to add her information.  

He pockets his phone when she gives it back and then says, “Your voice lends itself particularly well to, and you’ll have to excuse the irony, modern alternative folk music.”

She gives him a disbelieving look and then says, “If you actually think I’m going to sing a Tegan and Sara song with you…”

He laughs, awkwardly, but it feels real enough anyway.  “I’m—well.  I’m not sorry, because at least now I know, but—I’m sorry that this is going to get hard.  For what it’s worth.”

“Yeah,” she sighs, and then steps forward and gives him a hug.  It’s brief, and when she steps back she glances away and adds, “I’m sorry too.  I don’t have the power people think I do.  I can barely control what the Cheerios do, and—”

Oh, why did she have to go there?  He shakes his head and says, “Quinn—let’s not kid ourselves.  Tomorrow, when we’re at school, you and I won’t acknowledge each other, and that’s fine.  It’s a different world.  We might be able to have a conversation outside of it, but I have no hopes that anything will change for me at McKinley, and you should just pray that things stay the same for you, because…”

She actually winces and mumbles something that he can’t even hear, and then he just picks up his bag and says, “Have a good night.”

She doesn’t look up when she says, “Thanks for … not saying anything.  About what I said.”

He contemplates making a joke about how she could’ve at least pretended he was someone moderately attractive, but—

“Anytime,” he says, which then almost makes him laugh again, because while they’ll definitely not be doing this again,  _not saying anything_  is going to make up the entirety of his day planner for the remainder of high school at this rate.

*

It’s not until he gets home that he questions if maybe, he should be feeling different.

He  _does_ ; lighter, in a strange way.  It’s as if in making this one mistake, and even that’s not entirely the right word, he’s somehow righted a lot of things he really has just been pushing to the side for a substantial amount of time.

His dad’s in the kitchen, heating up a microwave pizza, and Kurt doesn’t even pause before walking over and hugging him firmly.

“Woah, woah,” his dad says, gently easing out of the hold and then turning around.  “You okay?  Did something happen at school?”

Kurt shakes his head, and it’s probably bad to do this in the aftermath of one of the biggest rushes of his life—regardless of what he now  _knows_ to be true about himself, his body sure did have a moment with Quinn Fabray—but he doesn’t really know how to stop it.

“Dad—can we sit for a moment?  There’s something important that I need to tell you.”

His dad gives him a probing look, but then just nods and says, “Sure, Kurt.”

He’s thought about this moment abstractly; more as a  _what if_ , in case he ever needed to have this conversation, but he doesn’t have any big speeches planned, and so they sit in front of each other awkwardly for a moment until he finally just says, “I’m not straight.”

His dad processes silently and then asks, “Are you sure?”

Kurt struggles not to laugh, because he’s hardly going to explain why, but does feel a need to stress the word, “Yes”, when he voices it.

His dad faintly smiles after a long moment.  “Well.  I can’t say I’m entirely surprised.  Your mother—let’s just say she gave me a heads up, and while I didn’t want to assume anything, the fact is that you own almost as many shoes as she did, and—”

“Dad,” Kurt says, because this is all a little too factual and rambly to be the reassurance he needs.  “Are we—okay?”

“Kurt—you could come in here tomorrow, and tell me that you wanted to marry a giraffe, and I’d still love you just the same.  Is this what I want for you?  Maybe not.  Not here, anyway.  But—all I want is for you to be happy.  And if that’s with another guy—hell, I might not understand it, but I will support you every step of the way,” his dad finally says, with his most serious face; the same face that surfaces during playoff season and when a carburetor’s acting up particularly badly for reasons he can’t quite figure out, and Kurt lets go of a deep breath he didn’t realize he was holding.

“I don’t think we have to worry about me being with another guy anytime soon.  I just—I’m tired, of pretending that I might  _not_  be gay.  I like boys,” he says, and the words come out so easily that he  _does_  laugh.  “I really do.”

His dad nods again and then says, “You want a pizza as well?”

“No.  I think I’m going to make cottage pie.  Mom’s recipe,” he says, instead.  “I could… teach you how, if you like.”

It takes his dad a second, but then he says, “Sure, Kurt.  That sounds good”, almost like he completely means it.

They spend the next hour in the kitchen, working together on something shared for the first time in God knows how long, and all Kurt can think is how  _lucky_  he is.

If they were friends, he’d text Quinn Fabray about it, later that night—but instead, he just watches the latest Lady Gaga video on YouTube and then sends her a tweet later that night, thanking her for being an inspiration.

It’ll have to do, for now.

*

Quinn smiles at him in passing once, the next day; it doesn’t quite reach her eyes, but he feels less tense because of it anyway.

When he gets dumpster-tossed after lunch, he actually just laughs it off and then finds Mercedes to talk about the latest episode of  _The Vampire Diaries_ while vaguely attempting some homework.

“I love me some Damon,” she says, tapping her pen against their calculus homework.  “What a hottie.  Noah Puckerman should go and ask that dude for some advice on how to be a bad boy, is all I’m saying.”

Kurt finishes integrating a problem question and then glances at Mercedes.  “Stefan’s more my type.  I think.”

Mercedes looks up in surprise, and then after a second she just nudges him in the shoulder with a smile.  “Hey, I’ve seen worse-looking guys.”

Kurt takes the moment and tucks it away inside of his chest, because—God, why had he even been expecting a bad reaction?  Mercedes is about as much of a part of the Lima establishment as he is, and she’s his  _best friend_ , so…

He’s on the verge of apologizing to her when she flips her textbook shut and says, “So—now that you’re being honest and all, can we talk about your giant crush on Finn Hudson yet or what?”

“I hate you,” he says, instead, and when she laughs at him, he rolls his eyes and laughs at himself.

*

Maybe there’s some need to make a public statement, but people have been making them  _for_  him for years.  All he does is stop denying the rumors, and absolutely nothing changes when he does.

Six days after the first time when he  _doesn’t_  say anything in response to being called a fag, Rachel invites him to dinner at her house, because apparently every gay teenager needs two gay men as role models—or perhaps she’s just desperate for friends; the thought  _has_  occurred to him, but he’d be more sympathetic if she wasn’t simultaneously unbearably arrogant and annoying.

He declines, as graciously as he can, and then watches as her eyes fall to the floor and she says, “I may not know exactly what you’re going through, but I know more than most people would.”

“Rachel, with all due respect, I’d rather spend an hour trying to explain the concept of tolerance to Noah Puckerman than spend even three seconds talking to you about what you’re insinuating you’d like to talk to me about,” he tells her, warningly.

“Are you talking to  _her_?” Rachel then asks, in a thin and hurt voice, and Kurt closes his eyes and sighs—honestly, just because he’s gay doesn’t mean he needs to get in the middle of lesbian drama.  This isn’t  _Degrassi_.  There isn’t actually such a thing as one giant community where everyone cuddles and revels in each other’s differences.

“It’s really none of your business,” he says, with finality, and then glances down the hallway, to where Quinn is shoving books in her locker while staring at them both so conspicuously that Kurt almost makes a cut-throat motion with his hand before he can stop it.

She snaps out of it, though, squaring her shoulders and slamming her locker shut, and slips her hand back into Finn’s.

“Do you even know which one of them you want?” Kurt asks, unable to stop himself.

Rachel opens, closes, opens  _and_  closes her mouth, but not a single word comes out.

“And that would be why we’re  _not_  having this conversation,” Kurt mutters, dismissing her with a look, and chasing after Quinn in the hallway.  Not in an obvious way, mind, because this isn’t the world where Quinn Fabray and Kurt Hummel talk to each other; no, he follows at a distance and texts her when there’s absolutely nobody else around them and they’re almost outside of the building.

 _ I think I found a song._

She turns around, as if she knows he’s there, and just says, “You must know more music than I do.”

*

They sit next to each other on the steps in the courtyard, skipping English—he can write himself a note if he must, and Quinn doesn’t get detention on the pure principle that nobody would dare cross Sue Sylvester—and he queues  _Re-Arrange Us_.

She smiles when it starts playing.  “Not what I thought you’d propose.”

“I’m not naive enough to think that either your personality or your voice would help Broadway happen,” he says.

By the time the chorus of  _Jigsaw_  runs around, her smile feels almost tangible, and she says, “Are you trying to tell me something, Kurt?”

“Just that—I think you’ll sound fine on the lower harmony.  Apologies, but I’m going to have to take  _her_  parts.  I’ve heard your choral harmonies, however, and we’ll sound beautiful together.”

“I like it.  What is this?”

“Mates of State,” he says.  “Artie really likes them, and I’m not principally opposed.”

She nods and motions for him to start it over again.

They spend the rest of sixth period outside, listening to different parts of the song, not really arguing about who will sing what and how they’re going to make it seem like it’s about the assignment.

In the end, it’s as simple as standing up together, and holding hands—but they have time to rehearse yet, and when Quinn says, “I’m as light in the loafers as you are”, before rolling her eyes at the bad joke, he laughs and figures they might as well dance their way through it.

*

The performance is sweet, and simple, and Mr. Schue looks equal parts surprised and impressed at how easily they pull it off together.

“The assignment accomplished what it intended to; I think I have a fuller understanding of Quinn’s life now than I did before, and vice versa,” Kurt says, when they’ve curtsied at the end, and Quinn’s hand is still in his.

“I think we can all agree that that really came through in your performance, guys,” Mr. Schue says, glancing at the rest of the room.

“Obviously,” Kurt says, and then glances at Quinn; not quite his friend, but definitely his ally.  He follows our eyes to where they’re pinning Rachel to her chair, and then feels her fingers tense in his.

He squeezes softly and says, “We did well.”

“Yeah,” she says, and their fingers slip apart, until they’re on opposite ends of the room again and he’s exchanging a small high-five with Mercedes.

Something’s going to give soon, and the terrifying thing is that he’s still not sure just  _what_ , or when he started caring so much.

*

Quinn teeters precariously on a wire for another few weeks, and then he finally gets the call that he’s been dreading.

“We need to talk,” she says, sounding devastated.

He doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to conclude that Rachel’s finally decided that she’d rather have the quarterback than his girlfriend and all of her issues, and he says, “Meet me at the Baskin Robbins in the mall.  My treat.”

She hangs up without responding, and he spends a good five minutes wondering what kind of hat screamed  _I support you_  without diffusing his general message that maybe she’s just better off  _without_  Rachel Berry, or that maybe this shouldn’t be about Rachel at all.

*

Quinn looks like she hasn’t slept in about four nights, and he covers her hand with his without asking if it’s okay.  She flinches but doesn’t budge otherwise, and he tilts his head and says, “I have at least thirty five different insults about her lined up—but let’s order first, so we can up our sugar intake  _and_  hate on her at the same time.”

There’s a very slow reaction in Quinn’s face, but it’s not at all what he’s expecting, and his mouth falls open a little stupidly even before she says, “Rachel wants to be with me.”

“Oh.  Well, gay panic slash celebratory ice cream, then?” he says, sitting back in his chair and reaching for his wallet.  “It can still be my treat; honestly, here’s hoping you make her happy and she stops being such a hysterical harpy about the Glee club.  My heart can only take so much more of—”

“I’m two weeks late,” Quinn says, stopping him in his tracks completely.

His wallet slips between his fingers and tumbles to the ground, scattering debit cards and random cut-outs of sewing patterns he’s carefully folded into squares and coins everywhere, to other tables and towards the counter.

Other people start picking up the bits and pieces near them, and Kurt mutely lets them drop his belongings back in his hands, but he can’t stop staring at Quinn.

Who stares back, and doesn’t take the words back at all.

“Shit,” Kurt finally says, and watches as Quinn lets go of her breath with a shudder before looking at the table, lips pressed tightly together.

“I’m not—I haven’t,” she says, cutting herself off both times, and then swallows hard before saying, “The cashier at the CVS knows my mother.”

Kurt stares at the cards and coins in his hands and nods slowly.  “Okay.  I—right.  So we need a test.”

She makes a small noise, not meeting his eyes.

“Okay.  I can get one.   I—do you still want ice cream?”

“I’m not really hungry,” Quinn says.

The first terrifying, horrific thought that hits him is  _just wait, that’ll change soon enough_ , and he almost drops the contents of his wallet all over again.

“Yeah.  Okay.  Well,” he says, and shoves everything back into his wallet before getting.  “Let’s go, then.  Let’s just—get this over with.”

It’s not the most supportive thing he could say, but then he’s not entirely sure he  _is_  supportive, and—of all the girls he had to have sex with (which really, were  _none_ ), of course it was someone with a painting of  _Jesus_  above her bed, so he knows that his only hope in hell that this will go away is in a negative test result.

God, and that’s selfish, because this is  _so_  not his problem first and foremost.

Quinn looks like she’s on the verge of passing out, and he stares at her for a moment, just until her eyes meet his for a second, and the level of panic in there perfectly meets the way his heart is slowly starting to beat out of his chest.

They hug stupidly in the middle of a Baskin Robbins, and he whispers, “I’m sorry” against her hair, wishing that he could go back to just wondering how she got it to be so soft and so shiny.

*

“We’re friends now, aren’t we,” she asks him, anxiously, from the en suite.

The door’s almost closed, and he thinks about the question.  What makes a friendship?  In the case of Mercedes, a joint interest in gorgeous men and a shared subscription to Vogue.  It’s more tangential with everyone else he would consider a friend; but is there anyone else in his life that he’s slept with, let alone done  _this_  with?  

Hell, he doesn’t even think there’s anyone else in his life that he’s sung a _duet_  with.

“Yes.  Of course we are,” he says, with more conviction than he feels.

She exits a moment later, holding the test awkwardly away from her body, and sits down next to him on the bed.  Where the magic happened, he thinks, and snorts laughter for a moment. 

“Sorry.  I’m—it’s that or crying, honestly, and we can’t both be girls about this,” he says.

She looks at him with a very typical head cheerleader look, and he smiles when he realizes it doesn’t make him shrink in on himself like he used to.

“I reserve the right to be a complete girl depending on—” he says, and then gestures towards the test.

“Get in line,” she mumbles.

They laugh, for the entire two minutes it takes for the damn thing to process, and then Quinn flips it over between them.

It’s two lines.  Kurt has no idea if that’s good or bad, but then Quinn drops the stick with a shaking hand, and that says enough.

Their fingers tangle together, and he takes so many deep breaths in a row that he might as well be hyperventilating.

“My family is going to disown me,” she says, quietly.  “I’ve been preparing for that for a month anyway, because… I’m not… I’m not the daughter they want me to be, and—somehow that’s the least of my problems right now.  How is that even  _possible_?”

The implicit  _why does God hate me?_ sinks heavily between them, and Kurt squeezes her hand hard.

“I came out to my father a month ago,” Kurt says, and laughs painfully.  “I don’t suppose you want to come with me when I explain to him that I didn’t so much change my mind as just test my hypothesis in a rather unfortunate way?”

Quinn runs her free hand over her face and then her whole body starts to shake.

It’s oddly reminiscent of the moment of conception, he thinks, and then pulls on her hand until she sinks into his side, burying her face in his shoulder.

“You’re not alone, Quinn,” he says, masking her nearly silent crying for just a moment.  “I will be with you every step of the way.”

He doesn’t even realize he’s crying too until she reaches up and brushes the back of her hand under his eyes, and then they just stare at each other for a moment longer.

There really,  _really_  isn’t anything else to say, and Kurt leans down and picks up the ice cream he got at CVS, just in case.

It feels utterly useless, but they work their way through it with two plastic spoons anyway; it’s not until he’s scraping along the bottom of the container that he realizes it’s a little too quiet next to him, and when he glances over, Quinn’s fallen asleep, one hand clutching his thigh.

The empty container is placed on her nightstand, and then he just sits there, waiting, because she needs her rest.  She’s not just sleeping for herself anymore; and even though his lungs tighten painfully at that idea, he wouldn’t dare run away from it and leave her alone.

*

The rest of the week is like a nightmare he can’t wake up from.  Being tossed into a dumpster is the  _highlight_  of his day, because the remainder of it is spent with him trying to figure out what, exactly, the costs of raising a child are, and how one goes about getting the requisite appointments for one’s … pregnant, minor friend whose parents should not find out about this for as long as possible.

His father gives him a generous allowance, which is entirely spent on clothing, and—he feels stupidly shallow.  All those days of telling Puck and his cronies to mind his designer outfits before they bully him are just a  _joke_ now.

On his free period on Friday, he signs up for a new eBay account and spends some time making a list of outfits he’s worn more than once and could live without.  His first attempt is wholly unsatisfactory, because there’s only  _five things on it_ , and his second one is aborted because Mercedes joins him and wants to talk about the latest episode of Gossip Girl.

He hasn’t even seen it, but makes noises at the appropriate times and talks about how attractive Nate is for a moment, and Mercedes doesn’t notice a thing.

Quinn shows up in the library an hour later and disappears down an aisle that he knows for a fact doesn’t contain a single book she could possibly need to graduate the classes she’s taking this year, and when Mercedes leaves, he finds her on the floor at the back of the library, looking at a biology textbook with a dazed expression.

“Perhaps it’s better to go into that part of the process without too much awareness,” he says, trying not to flinch at the picture of childbirth that’s on the page.

“Yes; unlike all the other parts, where we’re so  _painfully_  prepared,” she says, flatly.

He sinks down to the ground next to her and closes the book.  “We have time.  And I will tell my dad this weekend, and he’s been through it; he’ll know what to—”

“I’ll start showing in a few months,” Quinn says, softly.  “My parents will pretend it’s not happening for as long as they can, but when that stops being an option, they’ll throw me out.”

Kurt picks at an invisible piece of lint on his slacks and then says, “We have a guest bedroom.  And—honestly, the basement is so large that we could easily fit another bed and—and a cot in with my things, if we had to.”

Quinn laughs wryly after a moment.  “And then we’ll what—play house together?”

“Hardly.  I don’t think we’d ever agree on who would play the husband,” Kurt says, as calm as possible.

Quinn makes a noise and tips her head back.  “I’m so—”

“Scared?  Yeah.  Me too,” he says.  

Her head sinks down onto his shoulder a moment later, and they sit there until the bell rings.  He can’t really explain it, but in getting up and offering a hand, somehow he feels a little bit better—and she looks it, even.

He doesn’t believe in God, especially not after this, but  _she_ needs the faith, and so he says, “It will be okay.”

*

When she reams out Rachel in the middle of Glee practice two days later, throwing a set of liner notes at her face and then snapping at Finn a whole minute later, everyone else watches in complete shock; Kurt just has to fight the urge to give her a standing ovation.

He settles for a pointed, “Brava”, that has Rachel staring at him with an unreadable expression..

“Damn.  Someone’s got a bad case of PMS,” Mercedes mumbles.

The irony is so delicious that he texts Quinn as soon as he can, and then actually  _does_  laugh when she texts back  _your best friend is a blight on feminism._

Sometimes, Quinn is funny; it’s one of those weird things that nobody could have persuaded him of before all of this happens, but she has a smart, snide sense of humor that he appreciates a lot now that it’s absolutely  _never_  directed at him anymore.

 _ Says the girl who insisted I pick up the tab for coffee yesterday because I’m the ‘guy’. _

A response is imminent— _Why is that in quote marks?!—_ has him laughing yet again.

“Anything you want to share, Kurt?” Mr. Schue asks, pausing on his explanation of this week’s asisgnment.

“Just a hilarious rumor, Mr. Schue,” Kurt says, with a small smile.

“Well, if it’s so funny—”

“Oh, just—Jacob Ben-Israel seems to think that Quinn is having my baby,” Kurt says.

The entire room breaks out into laughter, eye-rolling, and scoffing, “Yeah,  _right_ ”s.

“It’s not  _that_  implausible,” he says, feigning offense, and Mr. Schue gives him a pointed look before continuing on with the lesson.

 _You’re right; my father hasn’t castrated me YET so I suppose I still qualify,_ he sends to Quinn, and maybe it’s not quite as funny as he wants it to be, but that doesn’t really matter when she sends back,  _tonight right?  send me a time and address._

This is going to be the strangest conversation of his life, which is saying a lot given the last month of it.


	2. Chapter 2

Quinn has pulled out the works, when she arrives that afternoon. 

In a different universe, he’s Fred Astaire and she’s positively Ginger, and they’ll go out dancing later tonight, painting the town a whole kaleidoscope of colors without a care in the world.  Her dress suggests that maybe, she’s thinking the same thing, and he can’t help but reach forward and fix her headband.   


“I didn’t know what to wear,” she murmurs.   


He almost says something intensely stupid like,  _out of all the girls I could have accidentally impregnated, I’m so glad it’s someone with your sense of style_ , but instead just reaches for her hand again and pulls her into the house.   


His dad’s watching the game in the living room.  It’s not entirely clear to Kurt, ever, what  _game_  is “the game”, but he can tell this is the game anyway because his dad barely even glances up when they first walk in.  Then, he notices that there’s someone next to Kurt, and they’re probably standing around like a set of Polly Pockets right now—tight smiles, hands clasped together.   


Collect the entire set—well, geez, they’re certainly getting a head start on that, aren’t they?   


Kurt takes a deep breath and says, “Dad, this is my friend Quinn.”   


“Yeah—the head cheerleader, right?” his dad asks, looking at her carefully for a second.   


He feels Quinn flinch.  “That’s right, sir, although Kurt and I know each other from Glee.”   


“What do you think the Titans’ chances are this year?” his dad asks.   


Kurt resists the urge to pinch his nose.  “Dad, she cheers, she doesn’t play, and—that’s not really why we’re here.”   


The television is muted after that and Kurt pulls on Quinn’s hand, until they’re sitting on the other sofa, perpendicular to his father.  Quinn’s knees slam together, and Kurt crosses his legs and lets go of her hand, and then—not a single word comes to mind.   


In the end, his dad takes the initiative, by saying, “I’m—a little confused.”   


Quinn glances down at the floor and Kurt swallows hard, like a fish gulping in water.  “By what?”   


“Well,” his dad says, carefully, before leaning forward and clasping his hands together—and then glancing at the score quickly, but Kurt knows it’s a habit rather than a sign that he’s actually not paying attention.  “I’m not sure what your friend Quinn knows, but—I seem to remember you coming home a few weeks ago and telling me that you didn’t like girls that way.”   


Quinn makes a small noise and then tips her head up and stares at the ceiling.  Kurt knows he’s blushing, even though he can’t think of why.   


“She knows,” he says, plainly.  “It’s—oh, God, how do I do this.”   


Quinn sucks in some air through her nose, and then pulls herself together so marvelously that Kurt can’t help but stare at her with admiration.  “We’re here because—we’ve made a terrible mistake, together, and you need to be told about it before you find out because we can’t hide it anymore.”   


His dad blinks at her a few times, and then finally says, “Define terrible mistake.”   


Kurt really doesn’t want the words “we had sex” to come out of her mouth, because holy top of list of things he never wants to talk to his father about, but Quinn is apparently a mind-reader and finally just murmurs, “I’m pregnant.  About six weeks.”   


The room is deadly silent for a long moment, until his dad releases a shaky breath and runs a hand across his face.  “Wow.”   


“Um,” Kurt finally says, because this isn’t Quinn’s job—God, if anything, this is the only part that he’s responsible for right now, and he’s just sitting there like a sad sack, letting her take the brunt of it on her.  “While I don’t think either of us want to talk to you about how this came to be, and honestly, I’m not sure I even can, we’re both one hundred percent sure that…. the baby is mine—”   


He locks, on those words.   


The baby is mine.   


Up until three minutes ago, the baby had been Quinn’s, but now there’s no air in his lungs and  _the baby is his_.   


Her hand reaches for his again and he latches onto it like a lifeline.   


His dad looks grey in the face, and a hand is pressed to his chest, like this conversation is physically hurting him.  “Jesus, son.”   


“I’m so sorry,” Kurt says, and he’s not even sure who he’s saying it to.   


His dad gets up a moment later and disappears into the kitchen, and comes back with three beers.  “I’m going to need this.  I don’t want to hear anything about either of you drinking outside of this living room, but—I think we are all going to need this.”   


Quinn necks the bottle like she drinks all the time; and hell, for all Kurt knows, she does.  Though she wouldn’t anymore; not with the baby.     


He himself takes a sip, and then can’t help making a face.  “Dad, this is—vile.  Why would you drink this when God invented cocktails that don’t taste like alcohol?”   


His dad manages a tentative smile, but it falters quickly and then he just drinks deeply, before sighing and saying, “Your mother made me promise I’d go over the birds and the bees with you.  I just thought—”   


“Dad, I know about condoms,” Kurt says, squeezing his eyes shut.  “This just—sort of happened, and—”   


“It’s my fault,” Quinn says, softly, and then puts her half-empty bottle on the table.  “It was my idea.  I’m the one who needed to…”   


“Quinn—don’t you dare,” Kurt says, sharply, putting his bottle next to hers; a matched pair.  “You didn’t make me do anything, and it was for my benefit as much as yours.  If I could go back in time, I’d obviously—take some precautions, but what happened isn’t your fault.”   


“Are you keeping the baby?” his dad asks; he sounds almost calm, but there’s a tremor to his voice that Kurt recognizes.  The last time he heard it was two days after his mom’s funeral.   


Quinn bites at her lip and then finally just nods.  “I’m sorry.  It’s not a choice for me.  However little she resembles a baby at this point, she’s real, and—”   


“Do your parents know?” his dad asks.   


Quinn falls silent, and Kurt tangles their fingers together before saying, “Dad—she’s Quinn  _Fabray_.”   


“Oh, Christ,” his dad says, and then just finishes the beer in silence.   


They sit like that for a good ten minutes; Kurt glances at the television and watches as the game rounds up, and his dad’s team wins.  Nobody cares in the slightest, and then he watches as his dad gets up, moves in front of Quinn, and pulls her up into a hug.   


“Anything you need, okay?” he says, and Kurt bursts into tears, because even though he knows he’s never let his dad down more, he couldn’t possibly wish for a better role model.     


For himself  _or_  for the baby.   


*   


Kurt’s baby book makes an appearance later that night, and Quinn browses through it with a very distant, composed look on her face.   


He recognizes it as a necessity, at this point, and leaves her be; joins his dad out on the porch, where his dad’s smoking a sneaky cigarette that Kurt would normally shout at him for, but his dad looks like he’s aged about ten years in ten minutes, and instead they stand next to each other silently and watch the sun set.   


“I’m going to be a good father to this child,” Kurt finally says, and then laughs at himself.  “God, I don’t know, Dad.  I’m going to try, anyway.”   


“What you’re going to do is start working for me in the garage, and you’re going to save your ass off so this kid can go to college one day.  You two are both smart, right?  This baby’s going to be smart, and this baby shouldn’t be raised in Ohio,” his dad says, firmly, before taking one last drag on the cigarette and stubbing it out on the porch rail.  “And when you’re not working in the garage, you’re going to help me turn the guest room into a bedroom for that girl, because—”   


“I love you,” Kurt says, and he’s never meant it more.   


“I love you too, kid,” his dad says, wearily, and then slings an arm around his shoulder.   


*   


When he walks Quinn to her car later that night, she’s silent and still as ever, but when she’s sitting down in the driver’s seat, her eyes are shiny.   


“You’re so lucky.  I hope you know how lucky you are,” she tells him, her voice thick.   


“I can’t make your parents something other than they are; but you can share my luck, from now on,” he says, and leans forward to kiss her on the cheek.  “Let me know when you’ve made an appointment for the ultrasound.  Okay?”   


She nods after a moment, and then takes another deep breath and says, “I’m—I need to break up with Finn.  Not just because of this, but—things are going to get ugly.”   


“Tell him the truth,” Kurt says, after a moment.   “Not about—you, but about how this happened.  Tell him that you were doing me a favor, and that you just can’t be with him anymore.”   


“It’s going to shred my reputation,” Quinn says, her hands clenching around the steering wheel.  “Which—it’s funny, isn’t it.  Two weeks ago, I would have cared.”   


He leans against the side of her car and then asks a question that he knows might be overstepping, but someone has to anyway.  “Are you going to tell Rachel?”   


Quinn licks at her lips, slowly, and then wipes at her eyes.  “I don’t know.  If I can, I mean.  I don’t know if it’s fair for me to.  Do we really want to drag other people into this?”   


The strangest part, in everything that’s happened, isn’t that Quinn manages to keep it together (barely), or that his dad is a wonderful man.  It’s that he’s somehow found himself on the side of Rachel Berry, where he’s still not sure if he likes a  _thing_  about her.   


“If I were her, I would want that to be my choice, rather than a decision that my… girlfriend made for me.”   


She winces at the word girlfriend, and then looks like she wants to start explaining, but he just smiles at her and says, “Baby Fabray could do worse than have a Broadway star as its third parent, you know.  There’s going to be so much talent in this child’s life that Ohio might actually banish it on principle.”   


Quinn chuckles softly and then says, “Don’t say Baby Fabray.”   


“What—”   


“Whatever it is, it’s yours, too,” Quinn says, with a quick, embarrassed look, before switching the engine too life.  “I guess we’ll have to negotiate on the order, but—”   


“If it’s a girl, just give her Angela as a middle name,” he says, before he can even really process the thought, but it feels so right once he’s said it that he nods.  “That’s—more than enough.”   


“What if it’s a boy?”   


He laughs shakily.  “Quinn, I highly doubt that the two of us together would produce a  _boy_.”   


“Science isn’t so much influenced by your dress sense, Kurt,” she says, with the hint of a smile around her lips.   


“Just call it a gut feeling, then,” he says, and taps the roof of her car before taking a step back and watching her pull out of his driveway.   


Quinn Fabray is quickly becoming one of his closest friends.   


It would’ve been great if they could’ve gotten to this point without, well.  A baby.   


*   


The break-up doesn’t go well.   


Finn is furious, and looks like he wants to throttle Kurt, which he can obviously do with very little effort; Kurt barely even has to fantasize to imagine his half-dead, limp body being thrown halfway across the corridor.   


Instead, Finn kicks over a chair and Quinn cries silently for a moment, until Rachel takes a step towards her and pulls her into a hug.   


The entire rest of the club looks so shell-shocked that it’s almost funny.  Mercedes is the first to snap out of it, and glares at him before muttering something like, “You could’ve told me.”   


Puck recovers second, and then just gives Kurt an appraising look.  “Sorry I called you a queer all those years.  I mean—damn, boy.”   


Santana slaps at Puck’s head, but there’s soft murmuring going on right now, and when Rachel stares him down from over Quinn’s shoulder, he realizes that this is the end of one lie and the start of another.   


“What can I say?  I know perfection when I see it,” he says, his voice wafer thin, but somehow persuasive enough for everyone else not glaring at him to chuckle.  His hand rests on the small of Quinn’s back, and Quinn pulls away from Rachel and leans against him instead.   


It’s a weird first encounter with the likely configuration of his new family, but for once he’s not tempted to throttle Rachel, so it could’ve been worse.   


*   


They’re ostracized, after that.   


Mercedes won’t take his calls, and he’s going to let her wallow in it for a while, because eventually she’ll realize this is completely not about her.  She’s a good friend that way.   


Nobody else even talks to him; though holy hell, are people ever talking _about_  them.   


Kurt himself has somehow he’s become an overnight sensation.   


The kid who knocked up Quinn Fabray right under Finn Hudson’s nose.   


A girl slipped him her number at the end of gym class today, where once again he managed to mostly demonstrate that a good eye doesn’t necessarily go hand in hand with good coordination.  It doesn’t seem to matter, though, and at the baffled look on his face, she’d merely laughed and said, “You are so  _cute_ ; no wonder she wasn’t able to resist you.”   


It’s a new dawn for him; but it’s also for Quinn, who is now roughly equivalent with Rachel Berry on the social food chain.   


They eat their lunch together, out in the courtyard, and he watches with some amusement as Rachel pokes through Quinn’s sandwiches before scoffing loudly and saying, “I’m not really sure how you’re justifying staying on the cheerleader diet when you have a  _life_  inside of you, but this ends now.”   


Vegan wraps are exchanged, and Rachel takes about Omega-3 and vitamin K for the remainder of the lunch; Quinn looks miserable and happy simultaneously, and Kurt finally just rolls his eyes and says, “Marie Curie—can it, will you?  We need a  _break_.”   


“Yes, I’m sure you do,” Rachel says, not without strength.  “And you can take it when you’ve delivered a beautiful, healthy baby that you will love for the rest of your life.”   


Well, when she puts it that way…   


“I hear cocoa butter is fantastic for alleviating stretch marks,” he says, because he doesn’t know a thing about prenatal vitamins or whether or not wine will help the baby’s heartbeat—but this, he’s sure about.   


Rachel looks thrilled that he’s participating; Quinn just sighs and says, “My first ultrasound is tomorrow.  I’d like both of you there, if you can make it.”   


If Rachel dares to squeal or make some other horrific pig-like noise in excitement, Kurt swears he will actually cram his crudites down her throat—but the strangest thing is that as annoying as Rachel is, all the time, whenever she’s with Quinn she seems to just know what to do.   


A hand wraps around Quinn’s upper arm, and Rachel just says, “I’ll drive.  My dads’ Volvo has been certified safest car in Europe three years running.”   


Quinn chuckles, and tips her head over until her cheek is resting on Rachel’s shoulder.   


God help him, but they’re kind of sweet together.   


*   


He’s seeing more naked Quinn now than he did when they—you know.   


It’s bizarre, because she mostly still just looks toned and beautiful, but then that monitor flicks on and Rachel presses in closer to his side, peering forward and then saying, “Yep—oh, wow.  There it is.”   


‘It’, the best he can tell, is a gray blob in the middle of additional gray, black and white blobs.  It’s nothing.  It’s—   


“Would you like to know the gender of the baby?” the technician asks, and Quinn takes a deep breath.   


Rachel, thankfully, stays out of this discussion, and when nobody says anything, Kurt takes an executive decision.  “I’d hate to completely miscalculate the nursery color scheme, so—”   


The technician shoots him a funny look, and some part of him wants to snap that gay men are in fact intact, but it would just be confirming whatever horrific stereotypes she has running around her head.   


Rachel’s hand twitches against his, and he takes it before reaching for Quinn’s as well.   


He doesn’t close his eyes the way Quinn does hers, and then the technician says, “Congratulations; she’s in great shape.  Really strong heartbeat, and—”   


“She,” Rachel repeats, her hand tightening around Kurt’s almost painfully.   


“Yes,” the technician repeats, looking between all of them with a still subtly confused, but now pleased-for-them expression.   


“She,” Rachel says again, and then glances at Quinn.  Quinn’s eyes are suspiciously shiny again, and Kurt exhales shakily.   


“Well, thank God.  What on earth would the three of us do with a boy child?” he then says.   


Everyone in the room laughs, and then Rachel’s hugging him and he’s just looking at Quinn, who’s staring at the monitor with a lost, hopeful expression on her face.   


_  
She   
_   
.   


*   


It’s one of the happiest moments of the last few weeks, and Rachel rambles about appropriately Christian-no-offense-Kurt baby names while backing out of the room.  Kurt puts a hand at the small of Quinn’s back—it’s been getting a little sore, lately, and he knows they’re going to have to talk about cheerleading sooner rather than later,but he’ll give her as long as she needs.   


Then, Rachel shuts up abruptly and gets the funniest expression on her face.   


“Shit,” she says, in a rushed whisper.  “Get back—get—”   


It’s too late, and when Kurt hears the surprised, “Quinnie—is that you?”, he actually thinks he’s dying a little on the inside.   


“Blame it on me,” Rachel says, sounding straight-up panicked now.  “They think I’m the whore of Babylon anyway, just—blame it on me, my parents can handle the flack, it’s—”   


Kurt loves her a little.  Man, did that come out of nowhere, but Quinn shakes her head and says, “Rach— _no_.”   


Rachel deflates completely and then just walks to the opposite side of the hallway, as far away from Quinn’s mother as she possibly can.   


Quinn’s mother looks at the hand Kurt still has on Quinn’s back for a moment—then at the ward sign above their heads—and finally at Quinn herself.   


“Are you volunteering?” she asks; and now they all know where Quinn gets it from.  The level of composure, not to mention sheer denial, is astounding.   


“You know I’m not,” Quinn says, low and steady, and then takes a deep breath.  “You  _know_  I’m not.  Just as you know that my pageant dress wasn’t actually taken in too far.  You know.”   


It’s ridiculous that his first thought is,  _she’s in a pageant and didn’t ask me for help?_ , but people respond to crisis in the stupidest of ways; Rachel, for instance, is staring at all of them without blinking, like she’s expecting to get shot in the head sometime soon.   


_  
Don’t worry, babe, you’re not the one who knocked her up,    
_   
Kurt says, in his head, and then has to bite down on inappropriate laughter.   


Mrs. Fabray’s composure cracks a little, under Quinn’s words.  “I assure you, I don’t have any idea why you could possibly be in the maternity ward—”   


“I’m pregnant,” Quinn breathes out.   


Time slows to a halt, and some part of Kurt wonders if the moment is as dramatic in reality as it is between them.  The falsehoods of Quinn’s relationship with her parents all splinter in front of them, and an achingly real expression of horror passes over Mrs. Fabray’s face.   


“You can’t be,” she says, tightly.   


“Yeah, that’s not really how that works.  Wishing it will go away.  Believe me; I’ve tried.  I’ve prayed, even,” Quinn says, dully, and then glances over at Rachel, who now just looks like she’s going to start crying.   


“Your father—” Mrs. Fabray says, almost choking on the word.   


“Just—let me pack.  Tell him tonight.  I’ll go get what I need and I’ll be gone,” Quinn rushes out.  Kurt hugs her tighter, and then levels the most disapproving stare he can muster at her mother.  It’s not much, because in objective terms he’s bricking it a little, but—it’s something.   


“And you’re—is this your fault?” Mrs. Fabray says, locking eyes with him.   


“Yes,” he says, plainly.  “Though I think my responsibility stops at the point where her parents don’t love her enough to actually help her through this.  That’s not on me.”   


Mrs. Fabray flushes in the face, and then Rachel’s tugging on his arm.  “Come on.  We’ve—there’s nothing more we can do here.  We all knew it was going to happen, and—Quinn, baby, please—let’s just go.  I’ll help you pack, okay?”   


Quinn stares at her mother pleadingly for one more moment, until her expression hardens and she says, “Yeah.  We’re done here.”   


They manage to walk out of the hospital with some dignity intact, and then Quinn throws up as soon as they’re outside—just barely managing to make it over to a trash can.   


Even when tossing her cookies, she’s elegant, and Rachel rubs her shoulders and holds her hair back while Kurt heads back inside to a vending machine to get her some water and some mints.   


Mrs. Fabray is there, in the lobby, staring at him; he almost hightails it out, but damn it, he’s Kurt Hummel and he hasn’t let Lima put him down once in the last six years.  It’s sure as hell not going to beat him now.   


“If you ever change your mind about wanting to know your daughter and your granddaughter, we’re listed,” he says, before she can look away from him.   


The look her face is almost worth the anguish on Quinn’s.  Almost.   


*   


Rachel is helping him decorate the nursery—she’s adept with a paint brush, even if she can’t shut up for more than two seconds at a time—when Mercedes shows up.   


“Hey,” she just says, shoving her hands into her pockets.   


“Hello,” he responds, not without censure.  She’s had almost three weeks.  This is overdue, now, and his life isn’t exactly in the kind of shape where he can be bothered to be polite with anyone other than the girl currently sleeping on his couch downstairs.   


“Kurt—I’m sorry,” Mercedes finally just says.  “I just—we tell each other everything, you know?”   


“This wasn’t my story to tell,” he says, and then sighs and looks at her.  “If you’re done being levels of diva that even Berry here can’t achieve without cringing, though—”   


“I resent that,” Rachel mutters, and then flicks some paint at him.   


When Quinn wakes up, the room resembles an abstract pointillist explosion, and the look on her face sets them all laughing again.   


“Paint won’t hurt the baby, will it?” Kurt asks Rachel, who just shakes her head and bites her lip.   


They pull Quinn into the room and spatter her as well.   


It’s the first time they’ve been able to breathe since this all started, and when they’re done, and Rachel’s painting in earnest again, a concentrated look on her face, Quinn glances at him and Mercedes for a moment.   


He rolls his eyes at her, because,  _really_?   


Quinn smiles, licks her lips and then leans forward and, for probably the first time, kisses Rachel in front of two other people.   


Kurt feels strangely like a proud parent, which is a feeling he ought to be getting used to anyway.   


*   


Quinn’s depression sets in around Christmas time.   


It’s a time for family, obviously, and she doesn’t feel like she has one anymore.   


Rachel picks up on it first, and pulls the entire Glee club together to do something about it; but the problem is, Quinn was popular but not loved, and despite the fact that everyone seems to have forgiven Kurt for his portion of the drama, they still think Quinn’s …   


… well, basically a bitch.   


The frustration on Rachel’s face after a very halting, unproductive meeting about what the holiday season actually means has Kurt saying, “Rachel—her family doesn’t have to be  _big_  to be special.”   


“I know, but—I don’t have  _time_  to knit a raindeer hat and baby socks and the onesie that I’m working on; for God’s sake, I haven’t put a MySpace video up in three days and—” Rachel starts saying.   


Kurt shuts her up with a hand to her mouth.  “All she wants for Christmas is to feel like she belongs somewhere—and not just because my dad’s a nice guy who doesn’t mind putting his son’s pregnant non-girlfriend up.”   


Rachel’s eyes soften, and then she says, “She needs a home.”   


“Yeah,” Kurt agrees, and then looks at the argyle monstrosity Rachel is wearing.  “Would you be terribly offended if I just gave you a make-over for Hannukah?”   


It’s a clear sign that things have changed when Rachel just rolls her eyes and laughs, before linking their arms together.   


“You should meet my dads,” she says.   


This time, he’ll take her up on it.   


*   


It’s the gayest Christmas of all time.   


The only straight person in the room is his dad, who was gifted a soft pink plaid shirt by Rachel—that troll—and now barely even passes for heterosexual.   


It’s also, weirdly, one of the best Christmasses he’s had since his mom passed, because the Berry family is like a ball of fire in an otherwise quiet house, and when Rachel and her daddy—the short, Jewish, and ultra-nerdy spitting image of her—start singing  _Eternal Flame_  after one too many rounds of egg-nog, Kurt’s not sure who’s having more difficulty breathing, he or Quinn.   


Quinn’s been a hot mess most of the day, because there’s that whole obvious shame factor of meeting your girlfriend’s parents when you’re pregnant with someone else’s kid—but he knows, by Rachel’s own admission, that the Berry men were briefed to within an inch of their life and have treated Quinn like nothing other than their future daughter in law.   


They’re all only sixteen; it’s almost excruciatingly naive to think that this is actually a prequel to their future lives, but somehow, when his dad and Rachel’s tall, football-playing dad start talking about the Cavs and their chances this year, he knows that he’s not just being silly.   


“How are you?” he asks Quinn, askance, when Rachel and her dad start dancing around the living room, and Quinn has legitimately never looked more subtly pleased.   


“I’m okay,” she just says, but after months of living with the girl, he knows it to be the confession of unadulterated happiness that it is.   


Then, she gasps, and reaches for his hand, and when it’s pressed to her stomach, there’s something there—subtle pressure, and it creeps him the hell out but—oh,  _God_.   


“Is that—”   


“That’s her.  That’s—” Quinn says, and then looks at him.  “Hayley Angela Fabray.”   


“Perfect,” he breathes, and then kisses her—because he’s had some eggnog too, and because she’s positively glowing with joy right now, and because she’s going to be his best friend for the rest of his life, because they have this— _Hayley Angela Fabray_ —to tie them together.   


Rachel’s scandalized, “Hey—find your own girlfriend, Hummel” breaks the moment, and Kurt grins as Quinn chuckles softly and then gets to her feet, cutting into Rachel’s haphazard dance with her father.   


Rachel’s eyes bug out when Quinn presses them together and locks their hands on her stomach, and then she bursts into tears, only to burst into laughter a second later.   


“Are your hormones contagious?” she then asks, as Quinn wipes away a few stray tears and—they are  _disgustingly_ in love with each other.   


Everyone can see it.   


“God, I really hope not,” his dad says, from the other side of the room.  “It’s bad enough that Kurt cries when the new Burberry catalogue arrives; I don’t need him crying at random.”   


Everyone laughs softly, and Kurt leans back against the sofa cushions and watches all the people he cares about, with the exception of Mercedes, slowly knit their lives back together.   


*   


It’s not always easy.   


Quinn has a lot of nightmares; he knows, because sometimes Rachel sleeps over and helps her through them, but when Rachel’s not around—and Quinn’s bedroom door is actually closed, because his dad’s an understanding guy but there are still house rules—it frequently creaks open in the middle of the night, and then there’s the pitter-patter of socked feet coming down into his domain.   


By the time her second trimester is done, and it’s spring, there’s an indent on the right side of his bed from where she sleeps.   


He doesn’t pressure her on the subject of the nightmares, and sometime in month seven of Hayley Angela Fabray’s life, the words spill out anyway.   


“I’m so scared,” she says, putting a hand on his hip.  “You have—great parenting is in your genes.  I’m not even sure I have genes, or just a lifetime reminder that I should probably not get near a bottle of scotch.”   


“Quinn—you are  _nothing_  like your parents,” he reminds her.   


“Am I really not, though?  Look at how I treated Rachel for years.  Look at how I treated  _you_ ,” she says, brokenly.   


He rolls over and looks at her for a long moment.   


“You know, our child is going to meet a lot of resistance and confusion even when we get out of Ohio, as we should,” he says, softly.  “And—I’m going to be there to make sure that she looks the part of a little star, and that she’s always well-clothed and well-fed.  But I don’t have it in me to keep her out of harm’s way in a very literal sense.”   


“You’d jump in front of traffic for her,” Quinn says, a little sternly.   


“That’s not what I mean,” Kurt says.  His hand strays towards Quinn’s stomach almost automatically, and sometimes he just likes to hover over the bump—like Hayley’s going to poke up and meet him halfway.  She never does, though, and eventually he puts his hand down and waits for her to say hello.   


“You’re a hyena,” he finally says, and stares directly at Quinn’s face.  “I don’t mean that you don’t have a heart, but you have  _more_  than that.  Anyone picks on Hayley, and you will tear them apart; it doesn’t matter if you have to do it with words, or with your hands—you will decimate them.  And you know what?  I  _love_  that about you, because the world is going to try to bring this kid down, and you’re not going to let it.”   


“Rachel’s the one who—”   


“Rachel has a big heart, and a lot of drive, but Rachel also spent years crying in the bathroom about all the terrible things you wrote and said about her,” Kurt says, as gently as he can.  “Hayley’s going to need a little bit of all three of these things to be okay, so don’t ever doubt that you’re going to be a perfect parent to her.”   


Quinn swallows hard, but—almost like she’s proving the point for him—doesn’t cry, or flinch, or do anything otherwise.  “Just once, I’d like to be something other than the bitch in this equation.”   


“Who said anything about you being a bitch?” he says, and taps on her stomach a few times.  “Rachel’s bitch, maybe.”   


“Shut up,” Quinn says, smothering a chuckle.   


“No, really; devoted as she is to you, and it  _is_  sickening, for the record—”   He hesitates, and then pushes up on both of his elbows, until he’s just on his stomach next to her.  “I hope that something like what you two have is in the cards for me.”   


“Kurt—” Quinn sighs, and then elbows him gently in the side.  “We’re just _kids_.”   


“Yes.  And trust me, I’m not banking on the Ohio dating pool,” he says, rolling his eyes.  “Just—you two have each other.  One day, I’m going to have to brave the New York City gay scene, and my best pick-up line is going to be,  _oh, is that Gucci?  My daughter vastly prefers Dolce, but I’m sure we can compromise._ ”   


Quinn pulls him into an unexpected hug, and he says nothing for a long time, until she says, “You could’ve abandoned me.  You didn’t.  Anyone who doesn’t understand what kind of man that makes you doesn’t deserve you, and I’ll gladly go hyena on their … behinds.”   


He laughs and says, “I love you, you know.”   


“Yeah, me too,” she agrees.   


The nightmares grind to a halt, after that.   


*   


Another nightmare takes their place:   


Rachel Berry, preparing for birth.   


“I’m going to kill her,” he tells Mercedes over lunch; they’re having it in the auditorium by themselves because if he even so much as goes near Quinn, he’s going to be lambasted with another check list of things that they’ve already discussed a million times over.   


“It’s almost like she’s forgetting that Regionals are coming up,” Mercedes mutters around a bite of pasta salad.  “Don’t get me wrong, we’re all grateful, but  _damn_ , Kurt.”   


“Oh, God, Regionals,” Kurt says, and then flops onto his back onto the stage.  “You know, eight months ago I would’ve cared about this more than life itself; I would’ve challenged her to a duel, even, to get a chance to sing _Defying Gravity_ , but now?”   


“I don’t think anyone’s thinking about singing, much,” Mercedes agrees, and pats him on the leg.  “Still.  We’re all just waiting for Rachel to remember and to completely lose her mind.”   


“I don’t think there’s much to lose,” Kurt says, wryly, and then whips his head around when the door to the auditorium slams open.   


“There you are,” Rachel says, tugging a sluggish, exhausted Quinn behind her; Quinn mouths ‘help me’ behind her, and Kurt bites on his cheek to not start laughing.  “I thought we agreed that today we’d discuss post-natal depression and how we can help Quinn—”   


“Hey, Rachel,” Mercedes says.  “Girl, I don’t want to stress you out more, but Regionals are in two weeks, and—”   


Rachel drops Quinn’s hand like it’s on fire and then gapes at all of them.  “Oh my God.”   


“Yeah, I mean, I have some song ideas,” Mercedes continues, placidly.  Kurt could kiss her.   


“I—oh my  _God_ ,” Rachel says, before turning around to Quinn with the most delightfully panicked look on her face.  “Baby—I need to—oh my God, we don’t have enough time, we’re going to—”   


Quinn demonstrates a special brand of magic by just grasping the back of Rachel’s neck and stroking there softly for a moment, going ‘shhh’.  Kurt wonders if the same thing will work on Hayley, if she’s crying.  He’ll definitely be trying it.   


Rachel shuts up, and then Quinn says, “It’s okay.  Kurt and Burt and I have a plan, okay?  We have a plan.  It’s all going to go fine.  You go—be amazing.  Pick songs for us.”   


“They have to be light on choreography; I wouldn’t want to induce labor,” Rachel breathes out.   


Kurt starts laughing, and then holds up a hand in apology.  “Sorry.  I  _too_ wouldn’t want to induce labor.”   


“Right,” Mercedes says.  “So—I’ve been listening to a lot of Tina Turner lately, and—”   


Rachel’s head whips back around, and  _there’s_  that maniacal showtunes face that they’ve all come to fear and hate in equal parts.  “With or without Ike?”   


“With,” Mercedes says, tentatively.   


“That’s  _brilliant_ ,” Rachel says, clapping her hands together.  “Let’s go to the choir room.  We can go over possible duet combinations.”   


She’s out the door with just a quick kiss to Quinn’s cheek, who then ambles the rest of the way down the aisle until she’s standing at the foot of the stage, her chin just about peeking up over it.   


“I might kill her.  Can we blame it on pregnancy hormones?” she says, but her eyes are smiling and completely giving her away.   


“Just think; it can only get  _worse_  from here.  If she’s like this with your stomach being the main course, imagine what she’ll be like when there’s an actual baby to care for,” he says, raising an eyebrow at her.   


“Hey—that’s my facial tic,” Quinn says, after a moment; she levels a quality old-Quinn look at him, but he just rolls his eyes at her with a grin.   


“You can’t be the only parent with a secret eyebrow weapon; too much imbalance,” he observes, before sliding off the stage and offering her his hand.  “I’m off to the garage after school, so if you need a ride home, you’re back to dealing with Babyzilla.”   


“Can I come?” Quinn asks.   


“To the garage?” he asks, frowning at her.  “Sure, but—wouldn’t you rather just take a nap at home?”   


Quinn flushes mildly and then says, “I think the baby likes the smell of gasoline.”   


“Huh,” Kurt says, and then frowns again.  “I have absolutely  _no_  idea how to incorporate that into the nursery.”   


A tug on his hand halts him, and he looks at Quinn questioningly.   


“The nursery is  _perfect_ ,” she says, firmly.  “And—before I forget—there’s an opening at the Gap in the mall.  I’ve already talked to your dad, and he needs some help with the accounting, so I can take over in the garage—you know, when I’m no longer beached whaling my way through life, anyway, so—”   


“You don’t have to—”   


“Yes, I do,” she says, firmly, and then glances at the floor.  “It’s been too many months of you taking care of all the finances anyway, and this isn’t the 1950s.  We’re equals.  I’ve just—struggled, but I’m done wallowing now, and—”   


He shuts her up with a quick hug, and then says, “Do you think I’ll get an employee discount?”   


“Oh, yeah,” Quinn says, and he must really be spending too much time around Rachel, because he almost claps his hands together like a seal.   


*   
  
  
He’s folding together the v-neck sweater pile when someone behind him says, “Hey, sorry, but—do these jeans come in black by any chance?”   


When he turns, it’s almost love at first sight; seriously, he has a movie moment that Rachel Berry would be envious of, because in front of him is the most perfect guy he’s ever seen—right down to the tips of his clearly dyed blond hair.   


“They do, but we’re low on stock—I don’t think we have your size right now,” Kurt says, with a quick—and permissible—glance down his new crush’s legs.   


The guy sounds amused.  “You know what size I am just by looking?  That’s awesome.   _I_  have no idea what size I am, so maybe I should take some notes or something.”   


That’s strike one against the guy being gay; but then there’s the way he’s smiling, and Kurt just can’t help himself.   


“I’ll write it down on a card.”   


“Yeah.  And like—maybe add your number.  In case I have a crisis over at American Apparel and they don’t have someone with your uh, gift there.  I mean, it’s almost like a superpower, you know?”   


He wishes he could record this entire conversation and play it back to Quinn tonight; it would distract her from her back ache—maybe to the point where he doesn’t even need to offer her a footrub.   


“It’s just practice,” Kurt says, faintly, and then writes down some quick measurements—they’re  _probably_  good—and, after a moment of hesitation, his number.   


“Thanks, dude,” the guy says, before running a hand through his hair.  Kurt feels his chest flip funnily.  “So like—are you into sci-fi at all?”   


“Oh, completely,” Kurt lies.  “I love—Avatar.”   


It’s the only thing that comes to mind; Quinn had wanted to see it for the special effects, and Rachel had wanted to see it for the love story, and Kurt just likes an excuse to wear his custom-made 3d glasses out in public.   


“Really?” the guy asks, before leaning forward on the counter and saying, “Do you speak any Na’vi?”   


“Um,” Kurt says, and then his phone’s ringing; it’s on all the time, even at work, because he’s expecting a certain bubble to burst any day now—and oh, God.  It’s Rachel.  “Sorry, one second.”   


He looks at the cutest guy he’s ever seen while he takes the call, and Rachel’s hysterical blabbering gets only one point across: it’s time.   


He says, “I’m on my way” and then hangs up, and then stares at his shaking hands and at cute guy and says, “I know this is an exceptionally weird thing to ask you, given that we just met, but could you maybe give me a ride to the hospital?”   


The guy blinks and then says, “Wow.  Are you okay?  I mean—did someone die?”   


“No, no—” Kurt says, and then cringes.  “I’m—my friend is giving birth.  I need to be there.”   


“Oh.  Shit, wow.  Okay,” the guy says, and then feels around his pockets.  “Yeah, I have my keys.  We can do that.  Do you know how to get to the hospital?  I mean, I just moved here, but—”   


“ _Thank you_ ,” Kurt exhales, sincerely, before pulling his headset off his head and rushing around back to find his co-worker, Matthew, and letting him know that he’s on his own for the rest of the afternoon.   


He hopes he doesn’t get fired for this.  The cutest guy he’s ever known likes black jeans, and when he’s done becoming a father, Kurt would really like to put in a special order for some.   


*   


“Thanks,” he says again, when they’re in front of the emergency entrance, and Kurt doesn’t have the heart to explain that maternity’s around the back.  “I—God, I don’t even know your name.”   


“Sam.  Evans. Sam Evans,” the guy says, and then chuckles.  “Sorry; I also like James Bond movies a lot.”   


“Yes, well—you were positively double-oh-seven for me just now, so—” Kurt rambles, and then just closes his eyes and says, “Call me.  About those jeans, and Avatar.  Okay?”   


“Tell your friend good luck,” Sam calls out, when he slams the door shut behind him and starts running into the hospital.   


He almost calls back,  _she’s not the only one who needs it_ , but really—that can and should all wait right now.   


*   


Quinn’s incredibly pale in the face, yet also weirdly purple.  He spots her through the door, with people in blue robes milling around her, and that’s terrifying.  Why on earth are there so many doctors—   


And then Rachel’s next to him with a little cup full of ice chips, and says, “Come on.  She needs us to be strong for her right now.”   


Kurt takes the ice chips and then puts a hand on Rachel’s shoulder.  “No—she needs me.”   


Rachel blusters visibly and then gets very angry very quickly.  “Just because your  _sperm_  is responsible for this—”   


“Rachel, I’m not staking a claim; I’m being a friend,” he says, as calmly as he can.  “She doesn’t need you to see her like this.  This is Quinn we’re talking about; she adores you, but—you’re her girlfriend, and she needs to be perfect for you.  Do you understand what I’m saying?”   


Rachel’s anger lingers for a moment, and then she exhales and closes her eyes.  “Yeah.  I hate it, but I understand.”   


He hesitates and then says, “One day, she’ll be doing this again—but she’ll be older, and it will be just about the two of you, and there won’t be anyone else she’ll want at her side more.  Okay?”   


Rachel smiles and then nudges his shoulder.  “Get in there, Hummel.  She’s in desperate need of a hand to squeeze off.”   


He pushes the door open without waiting further, and then cringes when Quinn wails his name and adds a few choice words that God definitely doesn’t approve of to describe what he’s done to her and what she’d like to do to him.   


Yeah—Rachel really doesn’t need to be here for this part.   


*   


The process, frankly, is disgusting.   


He’s been waiting for fatherhood for so long now that he’s been assuming all along that the baby would just one day be there, but instead Quinn is crying with exhaustion, he can’t feel his hand, and when she’s finally there—with one last screaming push, because Rachel scared the crap out of Quinn with facts about epidurals that mean that she’s actually doing this all by herself—she’s covered in muck that he doesn’t want to know anything about.   


“Do you want to cut the cord?” the doctor asks him, but he’s just looking at Quinn and running a lukewarm cold compress over her head.   


“No—thank you,” he finally says, because—nothing about the idea appeals to him, and he wants to forget what he just saw coming out of Quinn’s body as soon as he can.   


The second run at meeting their daughter goes better, because the nurse has cleaned her up, bundled her in a blanket, and hands her over like a small satchel.   


She cries, as soon as she’s in Kurt’s arms, and then he just leans down until Quinn can see her too.   


“Maybe we should call her Wail-ey instead,” he says, when she lets out another piercing cry.   


Quinn chuckles for just a second, but she clearly doesn’t have the energy to laugh; hell, she barely has the energy to  _look_ , and Kurt tucks the baby into her limp, exhausted arms the best he can.    


Then there’s just them, and the baby, and blissful silence, as all of the doctors file out of the room.     


Kurt stares at Quinn and the baby for another moment, feeling weirdly involved and excluded at the same time, and then says, “I’m going to fix your hair and get Rachel in here.  Okay?”   


Quinn nods, just barely, and the baby makes a small noise that—oh.   


His heart jumps, and he can barely believe that that’s what it takes, but it’s the littlest of noises coming out of the littlest of bundled blankets, and when he looks at Hayley for the third time, she’s suddenly right there, and  _theirs_.   


“Actually—you’re perfect,” he murmurs, just running a finger through Quinn’s bangs; she’s on the verge of sleep, and he backs out of the room and pulls a nervously-lip-biting Rachel back in without saying anything else.   


“Rachel Barbra Berry, meet your girls,” he then whispers in her ear, and has to swallow hard when Rachel pulls him forward again and says, “ _Our_  girls.”

He leaves them, after that, and finds his dad sitting in the waiting area.

“They’re fine,” he breathes, when his dad pulls him into a hug.  ”I’d say gorgeous, but all babies are ugly, so—she’s less ugly than most.  But she’s fine.  So’s Quinn.”

“Are you?” his dad asks.

Kurt closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath.  ”Yeah,” he finally says, because bizarrely—he  _is_.

  
  
*   


When they finally get back home, a day and a half later, and settle on his bed in the basement, Hayley blissfully asleep and settled on Rachel’s lap, Kurt finally remembers that something  _else_  happened to him recently.   


“A really cute guy asked me out,” he says, when Quinn just smiles at the scene at the foot of his bed, and Rachel makes small, quiet noises at the baby.   


“Wait—seriously?” Quinn asks.   


“Yes.  About two minutes before your water broke, so—I’m sorry that it was probably very unpleasant for you, but I have nothing but positive associations,” Kurt says, reaching for her hand and squeezing it.   


Quinn laughs tiredly.  “What’s his name?”   


“Sam,” Kurt says, and then laughs when Hayley coos at Rachel.   


“Cool,” Quinn says, before nudging Rachel with her toe.  “Come here.”   


Rachel settles between them, and places the baby back on Quinn’s lap, but then rolls onto her back and looks at Kurt first and Quinn second.   


“We’re all moving to New York, right?” she asks, before biting her lip.  “Because—it’s been about a day, I know that, but I’m already madly in love with her, and yet—I know that—”   


“Rach,” Quinn exhales.  “Really?  We need to do this—”   


“We do,” Kurt says, surprising himself.  “Because—she deserves all of us.  And there’s compromises we can make, so—we should make them.”  He glances at Rachel for a moment and says, “You have to realize that one of those compromises  _might_  be not making it to New York.”   


Neither of them look at Quinn, because she doesn’t need this right now, but when Rachel’s face falls, he knows that she’s thinking it too: that only one of them lacks the resources to go, and that the baby will always stay where Quinn stays.  That’s just not negotiable.   


“I just want us to try,” Rachel finally says, after the silence between them has stretched uncomfortably.   


“You have my word,” Kurt says, and then does look at Quinn.  “Right?”   


Quinn nods, running a thumb across Hayley’s miniature cheek, and staring at her with such intensity that Kurt can almost hear her plotting away; the best possible life for this kid is being crafted in Quinn’s head, right now, and while he’s dying to hear what she has planned—   


—maybe he should just let her surprise him.   


“So, now that she’s here—can we revisit that discussion about what faith you’re raising her in that neither of you wanted to have in the last nine months?” Rachel asks, out of nowhere.   


_Oh, heaven help me_ , Kurt thinks, and then rescues the baby and heads upstairs while Quinn’s voice is still tightly controlled—because that’s clearly not going to last for much longer, and he’s already realized that no matter how their actual living arrangements configure in the future, he’ll always be the peacekeeper.

“Here’s a secret, Hayley bean,” he tells her, balancing her on one arm and getting a strawberry smoothie out of the fridge with the other.  “There is no God.  … well, except for Jean-Paul Gaultier, but that goes without saying.”   


Hayley makes a small noise.  He takes it as agreement.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone who gave this a shot despite the whole Kurt/Quinn thing at the start. It is quite possibly my own favorite out of everything I've written, despite how crazy it is. :)

The babysitting schedule is Rachel’s wet dream.

She color-codes it, prints them all off three different copies so they can stick it in their lockers, bedrooms, and a communal location like the kitchen, and then bedazzles Quinn’s copy; she’s clever enough to not do it to his, obviously, but only barely so.   


The exam period is a mess; they barely sleep, because Hayley cries at night and needs to be fed regularly (and that’s yet another thing he’s in total denial about—that substance that’s in the bottle did  _not_  come out of Quinn, thankyouverymuch), and in the end his GPA drops by 0.3 of a point because Quinn needs the results more than he does.   


To thank him, she takes him out for dinner on a pseudo-date that ends with a late-night revival of  _Casablanca_  in the Lima discount theatre, and honestly, it’s the best date he thinks he’ll ever go on, because every part of it caters to his interests at the expense of hers.   


“She could do worse, than us,” he says, when Quinn’s unlocking the front door to the house and muttering something about how Rachel completely oversold the ending of that movie.   


“Who—Rachel?” Quinn asks.   


Kurt reaches for the keys and pulls on the door, opening it quickly.  “Hayley.”   


Quinn’s expression changes in front of him, from surprised to quietly proud and then to happy.  “Well.   _Yeah_.  Let’s face it, Kurt, it doesn’t get much better than us in Lima, anyway.  If this isn’t the capital of inbreeding in Ohio…”   


He laughs, because she’s finally getting a little bit harder around the edges again, and it’s a good look on her, no matter what other people say.   


*   


Hayley, much like Kurt himself, will grow up with everlasting positive associations to the sounds of cars being taken apart and put back together.  Quinn takes her to the garage almost daily, and on the rare days when Quinn can’t watch her, his dad usually volunteers to take the baby to work anyway.   


She becomes a staple, sort of like a champion for Hummel Tires & Auto, and more and more women keep dropping off their cars instead of their husbands just to see Hayley.   


Not that he blames them.  She’s  _gorgeous_.  And that’s not at all his personal bias talking, because he’s not above admitting that the 2008 Balenciaga Fall collection was vastly superior to the 2009 Spring collection, despite loving both.   


No, something miraculous happened in the way that their genes came together, and while Quinn might be able to explain the science of it to a tee, he mostly just knows that his daughter is going to be an unstoppable heartbreaker one day.   


He’s strangely proud.   


*   


Quinn’s doing sit-ups and Rachel’s reading a copy of Playbill.   


He’s mostly just keeping an eye on Perez Hilton for some ideas of where celebrities are taking fashion this summer, but then his phone rings with an unlisted number, and he jolts.   


Both of his girls look at him, and he picks up the phone like it’s burning.   
  
  
  
“Hello?” he asks, tentatively.   


“Uh—hey. Is this—do you work at the Gap?” a voice sounds on the other end of the line.   


His heart nearly leaps out of his chest, and Quinn and Rachel are giving him the most hilarious look from across the room, even as he mouths,  _help_  at them.   


“The boy,” Quinn hisses at Rachel, who immediately lunges for a notebook and then crawls onto the bed next to him.   


“Yes.  I do.  Um.  May I ask who’s calling?” he asks, and then resists the urge to slap himself in the head. Quinn perches behind him and puts her chin on his shoulder, blatantly listening in on the conversation.   


Rachel, meanwhile, writes the following down for him:   


_  
Be interested but not too interested!  Ask questions but not too many!  Stay calm but don’t be too calm because that looks like indifference!  Mention that your butt looks really cute in those plaid pants that you bought last week if you get a chance!   
_   


Quinn starts laughing so hard that she has to actually excuse herself, but not before pulling on Rachel’s shoulder on her way upstairs and kissing her so deeply that Kurt almost starts to hyperventilate.   


“Oh, it’s Evans.  Sam.  … Sam Evans.  You know.  James Bond,” the guy stammers, and Kurt relaxes on the spot.   


“Sam Evans of the black jeans we didn’t have in his size,” he says, instead, with a small smile.   


Rachel gives him the most effervescent thumbs up and the widest smile, and oh, he could just strangle her and kiss her all at once.  (Those exact impulses are probably what keeps her relationship with Quinn so fresh, actually—and there’s a distressing thought.)   


“Um. Yeah!  Wow.  You remember.  It’s been like—a few weeks.  Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask,” Sam says, and then clears his throat.  “You know your friend who gave birth?  Did that like—go okay?”   


As if on command, Hayley starts howling from her crib, and Rachel shoots off the bed to go and deal with her, hushing her to be quiet and then finally softly singing  _Twinkle Twinkle Little Star,_ which always calms her down.   


Kurt takes a deep breath and says, “Yes, thank you for asking.  The baby is… fine.”   


“Um.  Is the baby in your room?” Sam asks, tentatively.   


“This is a very long conversation that we should probably not have over the phone,” Kurt says; the words come out a little strangled, and he watches as Rachel heads upstairs, and then there’s just murmuring and some mentions of breast-feeding and—   


He cringes, and then says, “Do you still need those jeans?  Because—I could help you find a replacement.  Lima Mall isn’t exactly the Mall of America, but perhaps Abercrombie will have something that you like.”   


It’s silent on the other end for a long moment, and then Sam says, “Okay, I’m just going to put this out there.  You know X-Men, right?”   


Kurt has some vague idea, mostly because Finn Hudson liked comics and there was an awkward six months last year when Kurt opted to become interested in the things that Finn Hudson was interested in—and boy, does that ever seem like a different life now.  “The comic books?”   


“Yeah,” Sam says, sounding relieved.  “Okay.  So—when I read them, I always think that Professor X and Magneto would make a really good um, couple.  Do you get what I’m saying?”   


Kurt balances the phone on his ear and Googles Professor and Magneto and is immediately assaulted by pornographic drawings of two men all over each other—and—   


“Sam Evans, are you asking me if I like boys?” he finally just says, because this conversation is impossible to follow and Rachel’s talking about the Shabbos just out of reach and he should probably go intervene.   


“Well, I mean, I guess—I don’t know,” Sam says, before making a frustrated noise and saying, “I totally mean that but only if you’re not offended, and if you are then we can still go shopping for jeans I guess, but I mean, not if it’s too awkward for—”   


“I’m super gay,” Kurt says.  “How’s Saturday for you?”   


“Awesome,” Sam Evans exhales.   


He resists the urge to beat Rachel’s head in with her useless advice, and instead just gives her a hug when he gets upstairs and she and Quinn are scowling at each other—and oh, geez, there’s a baby latched to a breast, and he squeezes his eyes shut and just says, “Girls—how about we just raise her in  _all_  the religions?”   


“That’s a  _lot_  of holidays,” Rachel murmurs, after a moment.   


Quinn is the one to finally sigh and say, “I’ll love the research, you’ll love the reenactment of festive scenes, and Kurt will love the peace of mind.  She’s still getting baptised, but you know what?  She can have a bat mitzvah as well.  And we’ll just do Chrismukkah.  It’s easier for everyone.”   


It’s silent for another moment, and then Rachel says, “I love you”.   


It doesn’t occur to Kurt that it’s the first time they’ve said it to each other until Quinn basically stops breathing next to them, and then Hayley … disconnects with a wet pop and—   


“Give me the baby,” Kurt mumbles into Rachel’s ear, and as soon as Hayley’s in his arms, he gets up and gives Quinn a seriously pointed look that means she better not be her usual, closed off stupid self about this.   


Quinn smiles tremulously, and then scoots in just a little bit closer to Rachel, tugging her t-shirt back up her shoulder, and finally says, “I love you too.”   


He gets out of that room before anyone can start crying, and doesn’t realize he himself is until Hayley grabs at his cheek and her fingers come away wet.   


“Your mommies are so vomit-inducing,” he tells her, seriously, and then glances back at his laptop and all that terribly uncomfortable-making art of those two comic book men.  “You’re lucky you’re too young to really experience it, and I’m praying they’ll calm down when they get older.”   


Even as he says the words, he knows he’s not really holding his breath.   


*   


Sam Evans looks like a sex god in tight, skinny black jeans.   


Kurt almost pays  _for_  them, but Sam just laughs and says, “Dude, we haven’t even like, had a burger together.  Take it easy, okay?”   


Of all the people to develop an interest in him, it had to be someone completely  _normal_.     


(He wonders if this is what Rachel feels like around Quinn all the time, and makes a mental note to ask her later.)   


Still, two tickets to some terrible 3D action movie about piranhas later, and it feels like a semi-successful outing.  More so when Sam looks at him with a smile afterwards and says, “You hate sci-fi, don’t you?”   


“Hate is an overstatement,” Kurt says, as neutrally as he can.  “But—I’m willing to be sold on it.”   


“What do I need to be sold on instead?” Sam asks.   


It’s such an innocent question, and there is so much scope for easy answers like romantic musicals from the 1960s and 1970s, or Lea Salonga’s solo albums and ballroom dancing, but the reality of Kurt’s life is that it’s been approximately five hours since he last saw Hayley and he’s thinking about all the things that could’ve happened to her that he might have missed.   


“Sit down for a second,” Kurt says, quietly, when they reach a bench at the end of the food court, and then reaches for his phone and opens up a picture folder that he may or may not have prepared exactly for this purpose.   


“Woah, you’re being super serious out of nowhere,” Sam says, not reproachfully, but sounding a little concerned.  “You’re not like dying of some sort of genetic mutation or anything, are you?”   


Kurt laughs shortly and then says, “It’s fantastic that that was your first thought.  No.  But—this is serious, so bear with me a moment.  Okay.  You see this girl?”   


Sam nods.  “She’s really pretty.  I mean.  I think.”   


Kurt might not have any sort of romantic feelings for Quinn, but that’s nonetheless the only acceptable answer.  “Right.  That’s Quinn.  She’s…. my best friend.  I’m going to spend the rest of my life living approximately five minutes away from her, if not just living with her.”   


“Cool,” Sam says, and watches as Kurt flips to the next picture, which is one of Rachel and Quinn at Christmas, dancing together and laughing about something.   


“That’s Rachel.  She’s… Quinn’s girlfriend, and another fixture in my life.  I hope you’ll meet her one day, because it is impossible to describe her in words, but …”  He hesitates and then says, “She’s sort of like that younger sibling you have that you want to throttle half the time, but you’d walk through a burning shed for anyway.  Do you know what I mean?”   


Sam nods, and then looks at him quizzically.  “I don’t want to be a dick or anything, but you’re just showing me pictures of your best friends now, which is like—dude, I can  _meet_  them, you know?”   


“I know,” Kurt says, and then flicks to the next picture, which is of Rachel, Quinn and Hayley.  “Just—two more pictures.  That’s—”   


“Oh, hey, is one of them your pregnant lady friend?” Sam asks, enthusiastically, and then steals the phone, peering at the baby.  “Man, that is a cute kid.  I have a sister—Stacey—and she looked just like this when she was younger.  That’s awesome.  But—wait.  How did they—”   


Kurt almost laughs again, but then just hits the next key on his phone.  “Like that.”   


And then there’s Hayley’s birth certificate, and his name’s on it loud and clear, and Sam’s eyes bulge at it for a moment.  Kurt holds his breath until Sam passes back the phone.   


“I’m—incredibly not attracted to girls.  But, I wanted to be sure,” he says, softly.  “And that came with some unintended consequences, who are named Hayley, and who will always be in my life.  First and foremost.”   


Sam takes a deep breath and says, “Dude.  I wasn’t expecting this.”   


Kurt feels something in his chest shrivel painfully, because—he could’ve perpetuated the lie, and it would’ve been fine, but—maybe it’s all the Rachel in his life, now.  He can’t help but be honest about the bigger things.  It’s what keeps things going when Quinn’s upset with how her body looks these days, and Rachel’s upset about not having a right to be involved in certain decisions, and he’s upset about the fact that he doesn’t have the same instincts with Hayley that they do.   


“Believe me, I wasn’t either,” he says, shakily.  “But—it’s only fair that you know.  I’m almost seventeen, and I have a child.  We’re raising her together, and that’s a lot for someone our age to take on.  So—I like you, Sam Evans, but I would completely understand if you want to back away from this situation.”   


Sam taps out a rhythm on his jeans for a moment, and then just runs his hands through his hair and exhales slowly and thoroughly.  “Wow.”   


“Okay,” Kurt says, and hesitates before patting him on the shoulder.  “Thank you for a very enjoyable day, anyway, but—”   


“Woah, wait, no,” Sam says, before glaring at him for a moment.  “I didn’t say that I was like, over it now.  I just need a moment.  You have a  _baby_ , man.”   


Kurt would laugh, but some mornings he wakes up and feels exactly the same way.  “Yes.”   


Sam lowers his head again and then stares at the ground for a long moment, before finally saying, “You know, I always hated all of the Cyclops and Jean storylines because you know she belongs with Wolverine, but then they introduced Rachel and I was like, well, I don’t know.  I guess I can live with this because I like kids.”   


“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Kurt says, honestly.   


“I like kids,” Sam says, again, and then grins a little before shaking his head.  “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I mean.  It doesn’t actually have to change anything.  We can like, hang out and whatever, right?  I mean, you don’t expect  _me_  to like, become parent number three, do you?”   


“Number four,” Kurt says, automatically, and then actually chuckles.  “And, no.  She has enough people trying to ruin her life as it is.”   


“Okay.  So—you live with a baby, and we can work around that,” Sam says, before glancing at Kurt through his bangs.  “You think she likes acoustic Bieber?  Because—I know how to play a lot of his songs because of Stacey, but I mean, there’s not really any place to do that in public without looking like a total dork, so—”   


This time, Kurt does laugh, and finally says, “I don’t know.  We could find out, I guess.”   


*   


Quinn completely hyenas Sam within five minutes of him setting foot in the house, and Sam looks like he wants to laugh and cry at the same time.   


Rachel just presses herself into his side, which is even  _more_  awkward, and then says, “He’s adorable.  You know that I have equal amounts of attraction to both sexes, and he strikes a wonderful balance; lovely, masculine cheekbones, but wow, his lips look so soft.”   


“Are you kidding me?” Kurt sort of manages to squeak out, and then Rachel’s laughing at him and heading over to introduce herself.   


Then, Hayley makes a noise over the baby monitor, and Kurt rescues Sam to go and introduce her.   


Five minutes later, Hayley’s in Sam’s arms, and he’s singing  _Baby_  to her, and Rachel and Quinn are looking suspiciously emotional in the hallway.   


Then, Rachel gives another one of those ridiculous thumbs-up, and Quinn rolls her eyes and shoves at her, and Kurt laughs out loud before saying, “Come on.  They’ll watch her today—Rachel has lent me her copy of Funny Girl, and there is a bowl of popcorn with our name on it downstairs.”   


Sam lifts the baby like an airplane and passes her over to Quinn, still flinching a little at the mother hen look on her face, but—he’s totally won them all over.   


Kurt can’t  _believe_  that this is what his job at the Gap landed him—even less when at the end of Funny Girl, Sam wipes at his eyes a few times and clears his throat and says, “I really need to like, watch a Godzilla movie or something now.  Man, that was a head trip.  Wow.”   


When they kiss, approximately ten minutes into his Dad’s copy of  _Con Air_ —the closest thing to a monster schlock movie that exists in the Hummel household—Kurt can’t help but think that Rachel’s right—Sam’s all man, in all the right ways, but  _jeez_  are his lips ever soft.   


*   


Two hours later, two hyper-excited girls (in their own way, obviously; Rachel’s basically a muppet with flailing arms, whereas Quinn’s just gently sitting down and raising an eyebrow at him) fly into his room and settle on the bed, demanding all the details off him.   


He has to hold them off until Mercedes is also there, but she thankfully shows up before Rachel can actually kill him or herself with her excitement.   


Then, with a deep breath, he says, “We kissed”, and they pile onto him, yelling excitedly like he’s a sorority sister and he’s just finished pledging.   


Quinn just grins at him and says, “He seems nice”—and she might as well say that he’s the greatest guy she’s ever met, because that’s just how she works.   


It’s weird, but later that night, when he’s changing Hayley and singing  _New York, New York_ to her softly, he realizes that he’s never really been this happy before.   


All it took was two lesbians, a boyfriend, and a baby.  And now look at his life.   


*   


It’s impossible to think that Hayley is two now, but time flies, and Kurt’s whipping his tassel out of his face and shrugging on his re-designed graduation gown for the fiftieth time.   


It’s burning hot in Lima, and even though he wouldn’t let go of either Sam or Rachel’s hand for the life of him, their palms are sliding together wetly and it’s all just disgusting.  He wonders how Hayley is holding up, on his dad’s lap in the back, next to Mr. and Mrs. Evans and the Berry men; if she’s going to start crying soon because of the heat, or if the Capri-Sun that Rachel had hurriedly shoved into his dad’s hand just before the ceremony will keep her occupied.   


Then, he stops thinking altogether, because Quinn’s climbing the stage to some polite applause and getting ready to give the most important speech of her life today, and even though he wishes he’d had the foresight to bring sunglasses, he bears the glare and looks directly at her.   


She takes a deep breath, behind the podium, and finally says, “There are a lot of people that I could dedicate my position to today, but in the end, the path that I’m on started one fateful, scared afternoon with my best friend Kurt.”   


Rachel sniffles loudly next to him, and Sam sighs softly before saying, “It’s okay if you cry, I mean, I probably will.”   


The rest of Quinn’s speech is about overcoming adversity and realizing that reality is terrifying but not insurmountable, as long as people remember to believe in themselves and surround themselves with love, and when she finishes her speech with a quick, “I hope that my daughter will be exactly as blessed as I am for the remainder of her life”, it’s all over with.   


Rachel cries openly, in that loud, Broadway way that she does everything, and Sam clears his throat approximately seven times in a row.   


Kurt doesn’t have any tears, though; not when Quinn’s looking at the baby and then at him, and a face-splitting smile appears on their faces at almost the same time.   


“Start spreading the news; we’re leaving today,” Quinn murmurs, with a half-laugh hidden behind the words, and then tosses her cap into the air.   


They’re actually leaving two weeks from now, and not all of them are going to the same place all at once, but—she’s so right, and when Rachel breaks free of him and muscles her way through the rest of the row to go and meet Quinn at the bottom of the stage to hug her, he figures they’ll all be okay.   


*   


“Tonight’s the night,” Quinn says, on their last night in Lima.   


Hayley’s already tucked away into bed, and Kurt just looks up at her from the copy of Vogue he’s browsing through.  “Well, tomorrow’s the  _day_ , so—”   


“No, I mean,” Quinn says, biting her lip and then flushing ridiculously hard before sitting down next to him.  “Tonight’s the  _night_.”   


His jaw actually falls open.  “Are you telling me you two haven’t—”   


“Kurt,” Quinn hisses, and he drops his voice.   


“It’s not a ridiculous question; you’ve been dating for years now, and you’re every bit as in love now as you were when it first started.  The diminishing angst seems to not have affected your affections at all,” he points out.   


Quinn mashes her lips together and then looks at the floor.  “I’ve just—been worried.  I mean, she’s never… and the last time I—”   


He almost says that Rachel isn’t going to get her pregnant, but it’s not really about that.   


“It’s okay to be nervous,” Kurt says, thinking back on his first time with Sam, which—was really not that long ago, honestly, and there’s some irony in him saying that it’s okay to be nervous when he’d been shaking so hard in the lead-up that Sam had wondered out loud if maybe a latent superpower was starting to manifest itself.   


“It’s not just…” Quinn says, and then sighs.  “I want it to be perfect.  But  _I’m_ not perfect.  I mean.  I’m really terrible at—talking about it, even, which doesn’t exactly instill much confidence… and despite years of applying cocoa butter I’m still—”   


“Quinn,” he says, softly but firmly.  “Look at me.”   


She glances over after a second and he stares her down very deliberately.   


“She  _loves_  you.  She loves the parts of you that the rest of us can’t stand; she loves you for the good and bad choices you’ve made; and she loves your  _child_.  She’s not going to care about some lines on your stomach, or the fact that you don’t know what you’re doing.  I know all of that for a fact, because two days ago, Rachel was in here with a Powerpoint presentation and a whole set of questions that at the time just seemed like typical Rachel crazy, but actually make a lot of sense now.”   


Quinn frowns slightly.  “Like what?”   


“Like—if I think her nose is too big.  How she can possibly get perfect abs when they don’t come to her naturally.  If I  _really_  think she dresses like a child-baiting predator’s darkest fantasy.  If she should get a haircut, like you did, because her current haircut still makes her look like a child.  If she’s sexy at all, given that everything about her is childish.”   


Quinn stares somewhere to the left of him for a long moment, and then her face kind of crumples.  “How does she still not know that she’s perfect to me?”   


“How do  _you_  still not know that you’re perfect to her?” he counters.   


Quinn closes her eyes and reigns it all back in, and then just smiles faintly.  “You’re not playing fair, Hummel.”   


“All’s fair in love and managing the sex life of my two favorite lesbians,” he says, leaning into her side for a moment.  “Also, I would recommend having a glass of wine just so that you can both relax a little, and if you could give me some idea of the time I’ll make sure that Hayley and I are as far away as we can possibly get without leaving the ZIP code altogether.”   


A smile breaks through on Quinn’s face.  “You love us.”   


“I have  _no_  idea why,” Kurt says, and then flips Vogue back open.  “And for the record, if I ever see you buying a pair of harem pants, I am filing for sole custody.”   


*   


The next morning, Sam shows up with some donuts, and two very dissheveled looking girls come down the stairs at around 11am.   


Kurt drinks his coffee quietly for a moment, allowing them a reprieve, and then finally says, “You know, the just-got-laid look truly only works on wet hair.”   


Quinn drops a mug; Sam smothers laughter into his hand, before leaning down and tickling Hayley for a moment, and Rachel just makes a huffing noise that makes Kurt chuckle at her.   


“I’ll have you know that—” Rachel starts to say, but Quinn does that magical neck nape trick again, which  _doesn’t_  work on Hayley, and Rachel finally just says, “It was  _wonderful_ , thank you for asking” before storming upstairs again.   


Minutes later, a hair dryer switches on, and Kurt starts laughing until he cries.   


“You are such a jerk sometimes,” Quinn says, mouthful of donut, but then leans down and kisses the top of his head.  “And your boyfriend leaves really obvious hickeys on the back of your neck; you might want to do something about those once we’re in New York.”   


Kurt chokes on the remainder of his breakfast.   


Sam just grins and says, “I don’t know why you even try to mess with her; she could eat you alive, man.”   


*   


His goodbye to Sam is emotional; really, Rutgers is not  _that_  far away, but Lima’s like a pin drop in an ocean, and any distance is going to feel strange.   


It’s extra emotional because Sam gets a little weepy at the sight of Hayley being packed into the back of Kurt’s dad’s car, and then looks at Kurt and says, “Promise me that you’ll keep reading  _Young Justice_  to her even though I’m not there, okay?”   


“C’mere,” Kurt says, pulling him into a hug and kissing him where his shoulder meets his neck.  “I’ll see you in two weeks.  Two weeks, okay?  She’ll miss you like crazy.  Nobody else she knows will sing N Sync songs to her, so—you’ve made a mark.  On both of us.”   


Sam exhales shakily and then finally just pulls back, running his fingers through Kurt’s hair, messing it up a little—and Kurt lets him.   


“You’re like… the opposite of Kryptonite to me.  I hope you know that,” Sam finally says.   


Kurt feels a bittersweet smile come onto his face and says, “I’ll gladly be the Lois Lane to your Superman, Sam Evans.”   


With just another smile, Sam takes a step back and then reaches for Kurt’s dad and gives him a hug as well, and then they’re off—a long drive to New York, where the girls are already furnishing their apartment—and he prays to God that Quinn took his instructions to heart and vetoed anything that remotely resembles argyle in terms of decorating choices—and the future awaits them.   


It’s only when they stall ridiculously an hour outside of New York City, where the traffic starts getting horrendous in anticipation of the single-file mayhem that awaits them in the city itself, that his dad clears his throat and says, “Son—this isn’t the life I would’ve wanted for you, but you’ve handled it in a way that I don’t think any other kid I know could have done.”   


Kurt looks over in surprise, because he’s just going through his admissions stuff at FIT again, and it comes literally out of nowhere.   


His dad glances at him for a moment and tapes his pointer fingers against the steer and then says, “You’ve made good on that promise.”   


“What promise?”   


“To be a good father to that little girl.”  It’s silent for another moment, and then his dad adds, “I’m proud of you.”   


Kurt feels an ocean of tears well up out of nowhere, but it’s his  _dad_ , and so all he does is take a deep breath and say, “You know what would make time pass faster?  Some Mellencamp.”   


His dad laughs, but then somewhat gratefully turns on the radio to his favorite classic rock station anyway, and Kurt watches the city inch closer to the comforting sounds of home.   


*   


Sometime in the middle of their junior year, Rachel and Quinn break up for two weeks.   


It’s the worst time of his life.   


He doesn’t even know which one of them he’s angriest at; Rachel, for being so hung up on the fact that the reality of becoming a Broadway star is not quite the dream she’s always had, or Quinn, for not being able to understand that the crushing of a lifelong dream is as serious as the complete inability to dream at all.   


He heads out to Sam, and spends a weekend there drinking mojitos and watching as Sam goes shopping with Hayley and dresses her like an LL Bean catalogue—a move that will almost immediately be undone as soon as they get back to New York, but it’s just about different enough to be comfortable.   


Quinn cracks first, which surprises him, but when she calls, she says that she just doesn’t know how to apologize when she’s not actually sorry.   


“If she becomes famous, she can’t be with us anymore,” Quinn says, and then bursts into tears.   


It’s a ridiculous thing to say, until Kurt imagines reading about it in print— _my lesbian lover and her best friend and their child which I am helping to raise_ —and actually cringes.   


“Being relieved that your worst nightmare isn’t going to happen is not the same thing as not supporting her,” he says, handing his empty glass to Sam, who refills it without question.  “It’s being  _human_.  She’s never begrudged you that before.”   


“I don’t know how to be without her,” Quinn says, thickly.  “And if that means sharing her with the stage, of  _course_  I’ll do it, but—”   


“Why are you telling me these things?” he asks, watching as Sam presses all the wrong buttons on the blender and almost breaks it for the third time this year; and yet he  _still_  can’t help but smile.  “I think there’s a more appropriate recipient for them, and honestly, Quinn.  You’ve pushed a watermelon out of your vagina.  I think you can handle two minutes of groveling with Rachel Berry.”   


It’s silent for a moment, until Quinn says, “Are you drunk?”   


“Incredibly,” he says, and then laughs. “I just said vagina, didn’t I.  Oh, twice.  There it goes.”   


Quinn scoffs at him and tells him he’s no use whatsoever, but,  _please_.  He said what needed to be said.   


He always has done.   


*   


The next day, he wakes up with Rachel crying and laughing in his ear, and the only word that makes any sense of to him at all is ‘engaged’; the rest of him just has a pounding head, so it’s not until two hours later, when Sam’s whipped up some protein for breakfast, that it actually sinks in.   


He calls back immediately.  “I’m planning the wedding, right?”   


“Duh,” Rachel says, before giggling, and oh—how the tables have turned.   


“Oh, lord, you’re drunk.”   


“Just a little,” Rachel drawls slowly, and then there’s another laugh—and something about the tone of her voice is really creeping him out.   


“Wait.  Are you two in bed right now?”   


“Nope!” Rachel says, brightly.  “We  _were_  on the bed, but then I tried to do this thing I read in this book and fell off it, but it’s okay because Quinn just joined me and mmphh—”   


“Ah, young love; the breeding ground of TMI,” Kurt says, fondly, looking at Hayley on Sam’s lap, reading a book with him.   


“I’m not wearing a suit, by the way,” Quinn says, and then there’s more laughter until they disconnect.   


They’re his best friends.   _All_  of these people.  Hayley couldn’t have a better family if she custom designed it.   


*   


He doesn’t normally answer unlisted numbers, but he’s expecting to hear back about an internship with Vivienne Westwood, so the impulse to answer is natural.   


“Hello?” he says, and listens to complete silence on the other end of the line.   


“Is this… Kurt Hummel?” a voice he can’t place asks; it’s a woman, and for one moment he wonders if it’s  _Vivienne herself_ , but that’s Rachel levels of ridiculous.   


“Yes?”   


There’s a deep breath on the other end of the line, and then a soft, “This is Judy Fabray.”   


He almost drops the phone, and then leans back on the kitchen chair until he can glance towards the end of the hallway, at where Rachel’s door is widen open but her room is empty, and Quinn’s is closed.   


No real words are coming to mind, because—holy  _God_  is this is ever not his mess to deal with.  It’s something of a relief when Judy offers a few more in his place, then.   


“You—said I could call.  If I ever wanted to know—”   


“That was approximately six years ago,” Kurt says.  It’s not bitter, and he’s not sure if he actually believes that there’s such a thing as too little, too late, because what he wouldn’t do to speak to his mother again…  but she’s going to need to try a little bit harder than that.   


“It’s been a difficult time,” Judy says, and then adds, “I left my husband.  And made some changes to my life.  I just—Quinn’s not listed, and your father wouldn’t give me her number, but when I explained what you’d said—”   


Kurt stares at the design patterns in front of him, and they make so much more sense than this conversation ever will; still, he has to try. For everyone’s sake.   


“I will let her know that you called.  I’m… not entirely sure she’ll be receptive, after all this time,” he says, wondering why he’s apologizing when it’s almost deserved.   


“How—can I ask what her name is?” Judy asks, her voice unexpectedly rough.   


It’s not his place to say, but he’s so proud of her—excelling in ballet class, exceptionally good at math just like her mother, and she even has a keen eye for fashion and a distinct personal taste that’s apparently very unusual for girls her age—that he can’t stop himself anyway.  “Hayley.  She—she has Quinn’s eyes.  Most of Quinn’s features, actually, but my hair and a run of freckles on her cheeks that don’t run in your family either, from what I can recall.”   


“And they’re both happy?” Judy asks, after another long pause; like she’s absorbing the words the best she can, because they might be all she’ll ever have.   


“Yes,” Kurt says, and looks at Quinn’s door again—it opens and Rachel slips out in nothing but an old Cheerios top and her panties, flushing when she spots Kurt, before heading into her own bedroom and closing the door softly.  “They’re incredibly happy.”   


“Good,” Judy says, and then adds an almost inaudible, “Thank you.”   


His feet are leaden when he heads to Quinn’s bedroom, and he enters without knocking because frankly, he’s walked in on her and Rachel having sex so often by now that nothing can shock him anymore.   


“Hey,” Quinn just says, scooting over under the covers, and he sits down next to her until she can put her head on his lap.   


“I just got off the phone with your mother,” he says, stroking through her hair.   


Quinn’s body stills abruptly, and then she looks up at him with the most wounded, questioning eyes.   


“Is—did my father die?” she finally asks, in a whisper.   


“Oh, gosh, no,” he says, quickly.  Her hair’s getting too long, and they’ll definitely need to get it cut before the wedding, even though he secretly suspects that Rachel likes it at this weird in-between length.  “No.  She’s—she left your father, apparently.  And has been looking for your number.”   


“Oh,” Quinn says, and he watches as she closes off again.   


“She asked about—” he starts to say, and then there’s a ruckus before Hayley bursts into the room.   


“Kurt—can I wear a tie to school today?” she asks, breathlessly, holding up his old Harry Potter tie—Ravenclaw, of course, because he appreciates excellence more than bravery—and then climbing onto the bed.   


“Only if it matches your outfit,” he says, and then looks her up and down; she’s wearing a light blue polo shirt and a dark blue mini skirt and green knee socks, and—he starts laughing before he can help it.  “Did Rachel help you pick that out?”   


“No—she’s not wearing clothes yet so I chose it myself,” Hayley says.   


Quinn flushes and says, “I’m sure she’s wearing  _some_  clothes, Hayles.”   


“It’s okay, I know why she doesn’t wear them.  Uncle Sam explained it to me once,” she says, confidently, and then crawls up until she’s between them.   


Quinn shoots Kurt a desperate look, and he just makes a face and shrugs, because he has  _no_ idea—but unless he’s completely underestimating his boyfriend, he’s pretty sure the conversation devolved into nudity as a metaphor for superpowers and not anything inappropriate.   


Quinn pulls the sheet up with her as she sits up a little bit more and then reaches for Hayley’s tie—but it’s been  _years_  since she’s had to tie one, and after a moment, Kurt bats her hands away and takes over.   


It’s far too long for her tiny torso, and he almost tells her to take it off, but then Rachel appears in the doorway in her work-out clothes and says, “Oh my  _gosh_ , look at you, you are so precious right now.”   


“What have I done to deserve this?” Kurt murmurs at Quinn, who laughs and then rests her head on his shoulder.   


“What did you tell her?” she asks, quietly, as Rachel lifts Hayley off the bed and makes her turn and then strike a red carpet pose, and—well, he’s  _in_ the fashion industry now.  Perhaps he can pre-empt his child’s terrible future of being a fashion victim by making argyle and knee socks this year’s jeggings—though he can’t pretend it wouldn’t  _hurt_.   


“That Hayley is a bright, beautiful girl, and that you’re both exceptionally happy.”   


“You didn’t mention—”   


“No,” he says, because the decision to invite Judy Fabray to the gayest wedding of all time really isn’t his, and if Quinn opts against it, it’s probably less cruel to just not mention it at all.   


Quinn says nothing the rest of the morning, and Kurt and Rachel walk Hayley to school together, where other parents assume that she’s theirs and they play the roles of heterosexual parents perfectly.   


“I’m getting married in two weeks,” Rachel finally says, when Hayley’s disappeared up the steps with her friends Ashley and Mark, gesturing wildly about something in her mis-matched parody of a Catholic schoolgirl uniform.   


“Yes, you are,” Kurt says, linking their arms together.   


“And—” Rachel says, before frowning and looking at him.  “What happens then?”   


“Well, you’ll be married, and…” Kurt hesitates when what she’s asking hits him.  “I guess you’ll move out and find your own place?”   


Rachel’s step falters, and then she stops them walking altogether.  “Do we _have_  to?”   


“I don’t think I’m the one you should be asking.”   


“But—” Rachel says, and the look on her face makes something inside of him ache a little, because she looks every bit as lost as she did back when this all started; back when she loved Quinn, but didn’t know it, and back when Quinn loved her, and she couldn’t handle it.  “That doesn’t make any sense.”   


“Rach, I hate to be the voice of reason in all of this, but married people don’t _normally_  live with their friends.”   


She glares at him.  “Is that  _really_  how you’d describe our living situation, Kurt?”   


“I’m not sure how else to,” he says, and then watches as she wrenches her arm away and stalks off.   


Five years of living with them has made him more certain that he’s gay than all the sex in the world with Sam ever could;  _honestly_.   


*   


They’re all perched on the sofa when Rachel lines up her laptop and starts a Powerpoint presentation, and Sam says, “Oh, awesome, I love when she does these” before tucking Hayley under his arm and messing up her hair.   


Kurt’s on her other side, and Quinn’s perched in the chair next to his—and almost automatically, he reaches for her hand and she folds hers in his.   


“It has recently come to my attention that you’re all deeply stupid,” Rachel starts.   


Sam starts laughing and says, “This is already so much better than your last one was.”  (He’s not wrong; if Kurt never has to hear about the inhumanity of keeping horses in New York City again, it’ll still be a day too soon.)   


“Shut up, Sam,” Rachel says, firmly, and then looks at Kurt before flicking to the first slide.  “Kurt Hummel, better known as Daddy to some of us—” and Hayley giggles at her, before shushing herself, “recently indicated that perhaps we ought to split our household up after the wedding.”   


Quinn’s head snaps around to look at him, and he sighs and says, “Rachel—”   


“No, just hear me out,” she says, before flicking to the next slide, which is a scanned picture of a drawing Hayley made two years ago.   


It says  _my family_.   


There are five people in it.   


Kurt sighs and sinks back into the sofa cushions.  “Okay, then.”   


“This is not conventional,” Rachel says, and then looks at Sam.  “And what I’m about to propose might be rushing you, though given that you gave the boy a ring when you were eighteen and promised yourself to him for the rest of your life, Sam Evans, I don’t  _honestly_  know what is taking you so long.”   


“Uh, so long to do what?” Sam asks, blankly.   


“Move  _in with us_ ,” Rachel says, just about managing to not stamp her foot down.   


“Oh, dear,” Kurt says, even as Quinn takes a deep breath and says, “Baby—you can’t make—”   


“I don’t want us to move out,” Rachel says, and then there’s tears in her eyes.  “I want him to move  _in_.  I want us to get a bigger place, or maybe two apartments next to each other, where we’ll knock out a wall to put in another door—but I don’t want anything to change just because this is happening, and—”   


Quinn’s off the chair a second later, pulling her into a hug, and then Rachel’s just actually sobbing—in a way he hasn’t seen her cry since she lost out on the lead of the NYU senior play to a  _junior_  last year, and his heart aches for her.   


Hayley turns to Sam and says, in a perfect imitation of Quinn, “You did this.  Make it  _better_.”   


Sam stares at her, blinking twice, and then looks at Kurt, and says, “Well.  I mean.  I  _did_  give you a ring.  I’ve just been waiting for you to give  _me_ something.”   


Rachel’s crying slows down, and then everyone in the room is just staring at Kurt.   


He freezes for a moment, and then sighs and says, “We’ll never be able to afford a place big enough for all of us—let alone two places—in the city.”   


“I would survive Jersey for all of you,” Rachel says, heavily—but with the same conviction that she’d say that  _My Man_  is the greatest song ever written.   


“It would significantly cut down on my commute, actually,” Quinn says, before adding, “And give me more opportunities in terms of my residency.”   


Sam just says, “I  _already_  live in Jersey, so I mean.  As long as we’re not moving closer to the shore…”   


“Okay, then,” Kurt says, and pokes Hayley in the side.  “I’m glad  _one_  of us is smart enough to just ask the obvious questions, because I’m sure your mom has another eighteen slides to go through and at least one of them will try to get us all to stop eating bacon again.”   


Hayley giggles and then says, “Never.  I love bacon.”   


Rachel mutters something like, “Our child  wounds me” into Quinn’s shoulder, who just laughs and then nudges the laptop shut with her foot.   


“So.  I mean.  Hey.  Jersey’s not so bad,” Sam says, filling the silence.  “Like… Springsteen’s from Jersey.”   


“You are so talking to the wrong crowd if that’s what you’re hoping to woo us with, honey,” Kurt says, trying not to laugh.   


“Who’s Springsteen?” Hayley asks, and Kurt groans because he can just _tell_  that the next month of his life is going to be full of bandanas and jean jackets.   


His father will be so thrilled.   


*   


It’s probably also not easy feeling different in Cresskill, New Jersey—   


—but really, Hayley Fabray doesn’t seem to know or care that she’s different, and consequently, it’s just her paranoid and strung out parents that are bracing themselves for an eventual crash.   


The last of the boxes is finally in the house, and that’s when the doorbell rings and Hayley shouts, “I’ll get it”, her Wii controller already plummeting to the floor with a crash on their  _perfect, pristine_  hardwood floors.  (Kurt makes note to talk to her about dropping things after dinner, but Rachel will probably beat him to it, because he’s pretty sure that that crash is audible in the basement where she’s reading lines for her latest role.)   


A soft, “Hello” sounds from the doorway, and then he hears Hayley clearly saying, “One moment please, I just have to collect all my parents.”   


Kurt imagines the facial expressions that these probably pure-bred middle-Americans standing in their foyer are sporting at the words ‘all my parents’, and then laughs when Hayley actually hollers, “Dad, Uncle Sam, Mom, Mommy, the Andersons from next door are here.”   


Seconds later, Quinn bounds down the stairs barefoot and works all of her bedside manner into a greeting, before spotting Kurt—in the kitchen doorway, now that dinner’s on a simmer—and saying, “Hon, come here; these are our new neighbors.”   


Hayley stands between them and he shakes everyone’s hand and explains that he’s in the fashion industry, and they nod and ‘ah’ like that explains why he comes across as, well, possibly the most effeminate man on earth to also have a gorgeous wife and an adorable child.   


Of course, then Rachel pops up from the basement, wrapping headphones around her shoulders and sliding an arm around Quinn and pressing a kiss to her cheek, before saying, “Oh, sorry, hello—Rachel Barbra Berry; Broadway star.”   


He almost loses it then, but the deal is sealed when Sam pops out of the downstairs bathroom in nothing but a towel and just stares like he’s witnessing a traffic accident before mumbling, ‘Hello’ and running up the stairs.   


He’s pretty sure it will take the Andersons another six months or so to try and decide exactly  _how_  they fit together, and he knows that if he looks at Quinn he’ll start laughing hysterically.   


People who don’t suffer from his almost-panic?   


Hayley Angela Fabray, who just looks at their son and says, “You want to play catch?”   


*   


“Do you think they’ve discovered the joys of Slushie-ing in Creskill, New Jersey?” he asks Quinn, as they shut the door behind these people and their distressing amounts of normalcy.   


Quinn stares at him for a moment, and then a small grin cracks on her face.  “I’d like to see them try to do it to that perfect, crazy kid of ours.”   


“Indeed,” he says, and then tugs her into the kitchen to sample the bolognese he still hasn’t quite managed to perfect.


End file.
